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Ritual

Your life is worthy of celebration.

When is the last time you paused to acknowledge your life’s milestone moments?

 

Big milestone moments happen to us all the time. However, racialized capitalism (and other systems of oppression) requires us to move quickly from one big deal to the next. White supremacy culture and colonialism also mean that many of us are disconnected from, or don’t have access to, our ancestral practices that traditionally mark our becoming.

 

Ritual is a way we choose to mark our life’s milestone moments.

 

Whether the milestone is one you have been working towards for months or years, or the unexpected or occurred and you rallied by the skin of your teeth (or with grace and ease), you deserve to celebrate and process the meaningful transitions in your life.  

 

In creating a ritual, I guide you through a reflective and supported process in which you will:

 

  • Name your truth. What is the milestone, event, transition, or journey that is the focus of the ritual?

  • Set your intention. Use art, journaling, movement, and embodied practices to define what celebration, releasing, or closure feels like to you.

  • Make a ritual palette. Curate a mix of places, moods, colors, feelings, flora and fauna, sensations, tastes and smells that will bring your ritual to life.

  • Define the speech acts. What needs to be said, heard by others, spoken into the wild, witnessed or written to encapsulate and represent your intention?

  • Imagine the portal. Do you want to cross a threshold? Walk a labyrinth? What are the physical actions you want to take to honor your intention? 

  • Curate community (if desired). If you want others to witness you, participate with you, support you in this ritual, or even facilitate the ritual, we’ll spend time identifying who those folks are and how they can join with ease.

  • Set the date. Finding a time and place to practice the ritual.

  • Host the ritual. Whether the ritual is hosted by you, a beloved, or me, the important thing is that it occurs!

  • Reflect and reset. Check in with yourself at key intervals using a guided set of prompts to support learning and integration after your ritual.

What is ritual?

Ritual is an embodied spiritual practice.

 

Some milestone moments are celebrated in our society. If we graduate, get married, birth or adopt a child, or witness a significant death, we have a “reason” and structures that normalize ceremony or ritual.

 

Outside of these sanctioned moments, many of our most personally significant life events – transitions of our own making or that required huge effort with little reward – go unnoticed or get overlooked.

 

Milestone moments, transitions, or journeys can include:

 

  • Career change

  • Coming out | living out

  • Gender transition

  • Menarche (first period/menstrual cycle

  • Passing a huge exam or qualifying for professional licensing

  • Launching your…

  • Kid off to college or kindergarten

  • Death of a beloved human or pet

  • Start or ending of a learning, personal, or professional journey or program

  • Meeting a savings goal or paying off significant debt

  • Moving to a new home, city, region or country

  • Ending a friendship, marriage, or partnership

  • Becoming a parent, sibling, aunt or uncle

  • Spiritual, behavioral, or addiction recovery or sobriety milestones

  • Releasing a long-held idea, relationship, or pattern to make room for something new to emerge

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What ritual is not.

 

Ritual is not a party. It doesn’t mean that the ritual cannot be celebratory, joyful, or pleasurable. Laughter, dancing, song, and music are universal in both celebration and grief rituals worldwide.  However, the purpose of a ritual is reverence, remembrance, and revelation.  

 

Ritual is not a religious ceremony. Many religions include ritual; however, I am not ordained nor am I a member of organized religion. That doesn’t mean that your personal connection to God or the divine, prayer, or your religious practices cannot be embedded in the ritual. If you are looking for a religious ceremony or rite-of-passage connected to a specific cultural or religious tradition, I am not your person!

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Ritual is not a substitute for therapy or grief counseling. Ritual can be included in a course of behavioral and mental health treatment, but it is not a reasonable substitute for specialized care,  if you are experiencing suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm, or tangible community care.

 

Ritual is magic, but it’s not magical thinking. Meaning, completing a ritual isn’t going to make hard, difficult, or uncomfortable feelings, emotions, experiences, or relationships disappear. A ritual can be a catalyst towards more capacity, resilience, connection to self and others, choice, or abundance, but it is not a “cure” for the hard stuff or a guarantee of change. 

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