Grief initiates us into deeper belonging

The more I learn how to grieve (what is mine, what is yours, what is ours, what is for those without voice or who speak outside of human language) the more I extend my circle of belonging and care.

Even through the tremble of vulnerability that is opening to this depth of connection I am met with a bone-level resonant experience of kinship with the world. My grief connects me with myself, with others, in kinship with the living world, and with the painful beauty and exquisiteness that is this embodied life.

Inviting ritual into our grieving, our loving, is an ancestral remembrance practice and skill that tends to our belonging.

Ritual is deeply relational and inherently about reciprocity - reciprocity with others, whether those others are friends, family, community, Spirit, ancestors, recently deceased, deities, plant ones, tree elders, animal spirits, the animate ecology, spirit of place and land, the cosmic movements and more, that we are embedded within. Grief is one of the currencies of this ritual exchange.

When our grief is held in ritual and the fullness of relational reciprocity, it takes us out of self-focus and any misplaced aims to "heal our grief" and instead right-sizes us in the belonging of beings with grief as one form of love to be exchanged, which is inherently a healing experience of our wholeness and interdependence.

We may extend our grief as wailing, tears, art, movement, prayers, song, food, witnessing, and presence to offer to Others, inviting our grief to be received as an expression of care, love and healing. But it is our ongoing reciprocal relationship to this wider web of kinship, seen and unseen, that is the focus, the central ritual intention, and from which our grief offering and personal healing is but one beneficial outcome.

In the fullness of ritual, we human people are reminded of our inherent worthiness as members of a broader community of animate beings and within cyclical living/dying story-lines.

Ritualized grief is what reminds us we are not alone; that are held in the larger stories and ecology of inter-relationships that influence us and that we influence. We are reminded to extend our connection to Others who also need and value our presence, attunement and capacity to see and know them.

Our grief and our rituals reminds us that we are always connected to, and changed by, a rich and diverse ecosystem of beings, all participating in the ongoing belonging and unfolding of life and death alongside one another. Our well-being, and the well-being of all our relational ecosystems, is rooted in the reciprocity of this embeddedness.

Let's be alongside one another in this path of remembrance; we can learn together what it means to invite and embody this depth of reciprocity back into our lives through the living heart of grief. 

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I hope you will consider joining me for Belonging to the World - Relationship and Ritual for the Heart of Grief -  Oct 15th, 2025 start. 

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