A Simple Ritual for Grief

If you’re just arriving here, you’re invited to read the series in sequence: Introduction, Preconception, Conception, When Conception Doesn’t Happen, Pregnancy, The Story of Inanna, and My Journey of Descent

If you’re one of the many people in this world holding grief right now, may this simple ritual offer some form of solace.

For this ritual, I invite you to find an object you can give meaning to, to represent the grief you’re holding.

To explain the ritual, I will use a stone.

Feel the weight of the stone, the texture of it. Decide what this stone will hold for you. What have you lost?

Decide if you’d like to do this ritual alone, being witnessed by spirit or nature, or in community, being witnessed by others.

Find a location, a place in nature that can hold your grief. I often find a specific tree to hold the grief with me.

Invite in your guides. Speak your grief out loud. Hold your stone. Imagine the stone carrying some of the weight with you.

Let yourself cry, wail, emote with your stone.

So often I feel grief just wants to be witnessed.

It doesn’t want to be rushed. It will come and go like a wave, only to return later with more layers that want to be felt.

Allow yourself to be witnessed by the land, the trees, the water.

Speak your grief, feel your pain, and know that you don’t have to hold this grief alone.

Offer your tears to the land, they are sacred. Speak your story:

In this journey of your becoming, what have you lost?

What do you miss?

What do you long for?

Grief reveals to us how deeply we have loved.

Can you identify this pain and loss with your love?

After speaking about your grief out loud. Offer your stone (to the tree, to the water, to the Earth, whichever makes sense for you).

As you offer your stone, ask for help: ask that you are shown the ways you are not alone. Ask Mother Nature to hold this grief with you. Ask Great spirit to hold this grief with you. Ask that all your angels and guides hold this grief with you.

Remember that the size of your grief reveals to you how deeply you have LOVED. That is sacred. That is irreplaceable. That is holy.

Your grief is your love, expressed.

Sit in the silence. Offer your stone to the tree.

Now ask:

How can I turn this grief into beauty?

Into art?

Into gardens?

Are there ways this grief wants to move through movement?

Expression?

Does it want to be sung?

Written?

See how creativity may be with you through the journey of grief.

Thank your guides, angels, protectors, Earth witnesses.

Return to this sacred spot when you long to be held, to remember, and to release.

With love,
Meredith