The lost art of grief tending
For thousands of years, every culture across different countries and continents would have crafted rituals and ceremonies to support people comprehend the mystery of death and the magnitude of sorrow that follows significant loss.
Take the Jewish tradition for example, it was common to honour a year of mourning, filled with ritual and ceremony to support people stay connected to their loss. Similarly, in ancient Scandinavia people spent a period of time “living in the ashes” as they focused on giving space for their sorrow to shift.
Nowadays, we’re lucky if we get just a few weeks of bereavement leave and we are encouraged, if not expected, to return ‘back to normal’ as quickly as possible.
When I experienced a life changing loss in my early twenties, I was stunned by how lacking our society is in creating space for grief. As I started to learn about grief tending and experience ritual and ceremony, I realised that we have lost of the art of holding space for grief.
All over the world people are waking up to this need to come together. Communities are reviving a lost art for grief tending, supporting people to remember grief as a skill and restoring the language of loss and sorrow.
Firstly, to remember the lost art of grief tending, we must embrace and welcome all types of grief, recognising grief is as the natural and emotional reaction to loss or change of any kind. This means extending grief tending beyond bereavement and the loss of someone we love, to acknowledge the end of relationships, unmet hopes and expectations, ecological grief or the longing for deeper meaning and connection in our lives.
The next step towards the art of grief tending is to understand that grief doesn’t want to be fixed or made better, instead grief needs to be witnessed and welcomed. Grief needs space to express its magnitude and heals when it’s given the opportunity to be seen.
Grief tending also needs containment. We need the banks of our river to be strong if we are able to carry our grief like a river to the sea. Grief circles and longer retreats give people the holding and support to let their grief move fluidly, freedom to express and a strong container in which to thrash.
More than anything grief tending needs community. It needs people, just like you or me, to share our grief together, to let it be seen and trust that our human heart can hold it all – grief and love, sorrow and wonder.