“There is nothing more whole than a broken heart”–Rabbi Menachem Mendel

 

Grief Rituals: Healing Community with Phoenix Song

We live in a culture that often denies death, loss, and pain. I spent half of my life pushing down any “negative emotions,” until I feel like I was going to explode or implode. I have spent the other half of my life learning to integrate these wounds. They will never go away, but I can allow them to be and send them compassion and love. I am whole with all my broken parts. Or as Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Buddhism talks about the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows of being born human in this lifetime. We can cultivate 4 divine abodes of the heart: loving kindness, compassion (when we encounter pain), sympathetic/rejoicing joy (when we encounter joy), and equanimity (knowing we will encounter pain and joy in a constant dance in this lifetime).

Modern societies don’t tend to deal with grief well. We tell people who have lost a loved one to take a couple days of bereavement leave and then get back to work. We don’t have community rituals to help us metabolize our losses. Some of my losses that I have spent a lifetime learning to metabolize are the loss of my birth mother and culture, estrangement with my adoptive mother; the death of my 17-year-old stepson to suicide; and grief over the state of the world and earth and all the death, destruction, and trauma that bombard us in the 21st century and in the media.

Grief rituals are a powerful way to come into our shared humanity that we all experience loss. We don’t have to isolate believing we are the only ones going through difficult circumstances. When we come together in community to grieve, we create a large container to hold grief and realize we are not alone. Whether you are grieving the end of a relationship, the death of a loved one, planetary or climate grief, anticipatory grief, war, genocide, or whatever else that brings you to mourn and breaks open your heart, know you are welcome.

Through community ritual of building a grief altar; expressive arts (drawing, writing, movement, sounding) to help come into the body and move the emotions and express pain and create beauty and meaning; sound healing; and a sharing circle, we can lighten our loads and come into our broken hearts with love and care and connect with others. They are truly a beautiful, special, powerful experience.

I have been facilitating grief rituals for the last 7 years and have offered them at various nonprofits such as Reimagine, SF LGBTQ Center, and East Bay Meditation Center. I also lead private rituals for people experiencing loss of a child, parent, or other loved one. These are specially designed in collaboration with you to create the most beautiful ceremony and healing ritual. My wife Monique Miyake (hospice nurse, chaplain, bereavement counselor, death doula, and artist) and I also co-facilitate to design home funerals, memorials, and grief rituals. We also specialize in working with bereaved parents. Here is her website: moniquemiyake.com

Please contact me if you would like to bring a grief ritual to your community or home.