Voices of Experience: Healing Rituals Help A Grieving Family

Photo by Elaine Mansfield

Rituals do not always involve words, occasions, officials, or an audience. Rituals are often silent, solitary, and self-contained. The most powerful rites of passage are reflective--when you look back on your life again and again, paying attention to the rivers you have crossed and the gates you have opened and walked on through, the thresholds you have passed over. I see ritual when people sit together silently by an open fire. Remembering. As human beings have remembered for thousands and thousands of years.  ~ Robert Fulghum, in From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Daily Lives

For 25 years, Elaine Mansfield has taught and written extensively about nutrition, exercise and women's health. Since her husband’s death in 2008, her work and writing have focused on end-of-life and bereavement issues. She also facilitates bereavement support groups for people who have lost spouses or partners and writes for the Hospicare newsletter and website. Elaine is a strong believer in the healing power of ritual, as evidenced in her popular TEDx talk “Good Grief! What I Learned from Loss” and in the piece she shares with us below. Many of the rituals she mentions here are described in detail in her beautiful personal memoir, Leaning into Love: A Spiritual Journey through Grief.