So let’s say you’ve been integrating grief rituals into your daily routine for a while. Maybe you’ve also planned or attended a group grief ritual or two as well. How do you tell if they’re helping?
It’s a fair question. After all, I’ve made the bold claim that ritual will supercharge your healing. I’ve even called it a secret expressway. But I’ve also said that grief doesn’t really end. You’re not going to wake up one day and be “cured” or “fixed.” So what’s the yardstick for healing in grief?
I call it reconciliation, and ritual will help you start feeling its hopeful tugs and twinges more quickly. With reconciliation comes a renewed sense of energy and confidence, an ability to fully acknowledge the reality of the death, and a capacity to become re-involved in the activities of living. There is also an acknowledgment that pain and grief are difficult, yet necessary, parts of life.
As the experience of reconciliation unfolds, you will recognize that life is and will continue to be different without the presence of the person who died. The death becomes a part of you. Beyond an intellectual working through of the death, there is also an emotional and spiritual working through. What had been understood at the “head” level is now understood at the “heart” level.
You will find that as you achieve reconciliation, the sharp, ever-present pain of grief will give rise to a renewed sense of meaning and purpose. Your feeling of loss will not disappear, yet they will soften, and the intense pangs of grief will become less frequent. Hope for a continued life will emerge as you are able to make commitments to the future, realizing that the person you have given love to and received love from will never be forgotten. The unfolding of this journey is not intended to create a return to an “old normal” but the discovery of a “new normal.”
To help explore where you are in your movement toward reconciliation, look for the following signs. And remember that reconciliation is an ongoing process. If you are early in the work of mourning, you may not be experiencing any of these signs yet, and that’s OK. But this list will give you a way to monitor your movement toward healing and the effectiveness of your daily grief ritual practice.
The more you actively engage and express your grief, especially through ritual, the sooner you will find yourself experiencing some or all of the following signs of reconciliation:
Reconciliation emerges much in the way grass grows. Usually we don’t check our lawns daily to see if the grass is growing, but it does grow, and soon we come to realize it’s time to mow the grass again. Likewise, we don’t look at ourselves each day as mourners to see how we are healing. Yet we do come to realize, over the course of months and years, that we have come a long way.
Usually there is not one great moment of “arrival” but instead subtle changes and small advancements. It’s helpful to have gratitude for even very small advancements. If you are beginning to taste your food again, be thankful. If you mustered the energy to meet your friend for lunch, be grateful. If you finally got a good night’s sleep, rejoice.
One of my greatest teachers, C. S. Lewis, wrote this in A Grief Observed about his grief symptoms as they eased in his journey to reconciliation:
“There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight, when you first notice them they have already been going on for some time.”
Of course, you will take some steps backward from time to time in your grief journey, even if you are using rituals daily, but that is to be expected. Keep believing in yourself. Keep working your rituals. Set your intention to reconcile your grief and have hope that you can and will come to live and love again.