Rituals of Return: Reclaiming Grief as a Sacred Passage

Rituals of Return: Post #2

Reclaiming Grief as a Sacred Passage

Grief is not always about death.

Sometimes, grief is about the lives we didn’t get to live.

For me, grief has come in layers. I have grieved the childhood I didn’t get to have because of abuse and neglect. I have grieved the young adult years that should have been full of exploration and becoming, but instead were marked by survival. I grieve for those versions of me — the “me’s” who missed out, who were silenced, who were carrying weight that wasn’t theirs.

Grief has also come in the form of endings that were necessary but painful. When I divorced, I knew it was the right decision. And yet I grieved what could have been — the family I thought I would have, the children I imagined, the life that was no longer possible.

Grief can take many shapes:

• The loss of an idea.

• The loss of expectations.

• The loss of someone who is here in body but gone in spirit or mind.

• The loss of years stolen by harm.

And grief matters. Because if we don’t allow ourselves to grieve, the weight stays. It settles in the body. It turns to silence, tension, hardness. But when we allow grief to move, our ancestors can meet us there. They can help us carry what we cannot, and they can guide us into new ways of holding the ache.

Ritual invitations for grief

These are simple practices to help grief move through, so it doesn’t stay locked in your body:

• The water bowl ritual: Speak your grief into water. Pour it back into the earth. Let the soil hold what your body no longer can.

• The stone ritual: Hold a stone as you breathe. Imagine it absorbing the weight. Return it to the earth when you’re ready.

• The paper ritual: Write down the grief. The version of yourself you lost, the life that is no longer, the words unspoken. Bury it, letting the soil compost it.

• The voice ritual: Let sound carry what silence has kept: a hum, a song, a cry.

  
  

Not every practice will feel right every time. That’s okay. Grief has its own language.

This is the work I hold in my coaching: creating containers where Black women can bring not only grief for others, but grief for themselves. Spaces where our grief is not minimized or rushed, but honored as sacred, necessary, and worthy of witness.

Grief is not only about endings. It is about telling the truth of what was lost and allowing that truth to become part of our healing.

Reflection:

What grief are you carrying for yourself?

What could-have-beens or should-have-beens still ache in you?

What would it mean to give yourself permission to grieve them?