Autumn, Grief, and the Power of Ritual

As the seasons turn, grief often stirs in new ways. Autumn, with its falling leaves and lengthening nights, mirrors the cycles of release and renewal we carry in our own hearts. In this piece, I reflect on what the woodland teaches us and share a simple ritual you can use to honour your grief, release what feels too heavy, and step gently into the months ahead.

Autumn as a Teacher

I’m feeling sad as the evening darkness arrives a little earlier, followed by a later departure the following morning. As the weeks go by, and the darkness envelopes the daylight hours until only a relatively small period of light remains, I’ll struggle to get out of bed at the usual time as the night dark will be there to greet me.

It’s still early Autumn. Many trees seem to be nowhere near to releasing their leaves. But we know what’s to come; we know how it feels: the damp mists, heavy rain, and who knows, autumn gales threatening to uproot, to blow down, all manner of structures. I love autumn. I love the eerie silence in the woods as trees stand naked to the elements, braced yet flexing in response to the storm’s assault.

Increasing numbers of people find solace and wisdom when out walking in woodland. There’s the skeleton of that long dead tree, beautiful and dignified, with the odd young leafy branch still succoured by it, surrounded by its community of younger, protective trees.

Leaves fall, but look! On some trees, there are already tiny buds of the new leaves which will shoot strong when the sap rises in Spring.

Underfoot, a thick carpet of leaves, years of layers, autumn by autumn. Good for garden mulch, for sure. Protecting tiny saplings, nourishing the mycelium, which in turn both nourishes and communicates with the trees throughout the woodland. What other wisdom might be being offered to us here?

The Mirror of Grief

Nature shows us in her patient, cyclical way that there is a rhythm of release. What once was green and full of life must now return to the earth, creating space for renewal in time. What has fallen, nourishes the earth…and the cycle continues.
While there are many other ways in which we may recognise significant cyclical patterns of release and renewal which we can use as helpful metaphors for our own lives, for me, none are as powerful as those gentle, deep, lessons which woodland offers us. Woodland provides us with multiple resonant lessons which are both philosophical and spiritual and especially when we grieve.

The loss of a beloved, while excruciatingly painful in every way, also offers us both an opportunity to reflect deeply on the life we’ve shared with our loved one, and to review what we may, and will, need for ourselves in the different world we now inhabit.

In grief therapy, my clients often undertake deep work relating to what nowadays is referred to as ‘shadow work’: old narratives relating to guilt, shame, blame, abandonment, fear of lack, some or all of which they carry to some degree. While they might not have a direct connection to the loss of the beloved, nevertheless, they become exposed by the visceral experience of grieving.

“I’m so burdened by guilt at how I failed him in his last days…”.

“I blame myself for not asking her how she was on what turned out to be her last day…”.

“If only we’d planned more for our future, but we felt invincible…until we weren’t”.

“Now, I’ve no idea how I’ll manage; there’s hardly any money left and I don’t know where to turn…”

It’s as if, without warning, we become like a great Tree in winter: stripped bare. Leafless, unclothed, without protection from the bitter winter elements. We feel alone, stripped bare of all that was usual and normal and ordinary in our life. Who is there to protect us? What will cover our emotional and psychological nakedness?

It’s here, that Autumn offers us a mirror. There is dignity in letting go, not as defeat nor as helplessness, but as participation in a larger, and profound, cycle.

Why Ritual Matters

As a (still) Anglican Priest who presided over myriad Christian, and not always very Christian, rituals in the course of my work as Parish Priest and as a NHS Healthcare Chaplain, I know in my gut how important and powerful rituals are in holding emotion, meaning, and the unspeakable as well as in containing and conveying these.

Rituals, Liturgy – Church Services of Holy Communion, Funeral Services of Cremation or Burial, impromptu rituals devised for a person in a particular wondrous or tragic circumstance which no ‘ready-prepped’ liturgy out of a Service Book will serve, or as now, Shamanic rituals for healing – are and should be strong yet flexible structures. They are best when they contain poetic language, metaphor, imagery, and silence, allowing heart, mind and Spirit to rest in them be nourished by them and, particularly, to feel and know that their portion of life is represented in them. Rituals are simultaneously deeply personal and impersonal. That is part of their strength.

So, rituals are not empty gestures. They anchor us in meaning, mark transitions, and give shape to emotions that otherwise swirl without a container. To release what burdens us, we need a vessel strong enough to hold the weight. Ritual is that vessel.

When we grieve, simple rituals (those we might devise ourselves from what’s available at home, those we find ready prepped online or in books) are able to contain and carry immense unspokenness. It’s incredibly tiring always to use our own words when grief weighs us down. Using words which someone else has spun together into a flexible yet strong container of ritual can be very liberating for us. It’s a bit like coming across a high quality take-away meal which rescues you from agonising about what to cook for dinner when you’re too exhausted to know anything at all.

Release is a fashionable word in the holistic therapy world just now. Release is a setting free, an opening out of ourselves, like opening our arms to welcome a loved one. It can be an unguarded action, a liberating action.

Good Rituals can help grieving people to begin to release distress, to begin to unravel the ropes of wordless grieving alone which imprison them.

We release an autumn leaf into a stream. The leaf is carried this way and that, bumping into sticks, rocks and boulders as it’s carried downstream. It remains the leaf.

Consciously and intentionally releasing our distress isn’t about getting rid of it once and for all. At this point, the analogy of releasing the leaf into the stream falls apart, doesn’t it? The leaf is carried downstream, away from its home ground. A ritual involving conscious release of distress is less about getting rid of it but rather putting it outside ourselves, acknowledging its presence in our life, how it informs us, constrains us, changes us. It might be described as a moment of autonomy.

Consciously, intentionally, we identify, for example, different types of grief distress which burden us. Up to this point, we might have felt threatened and overwhelmed by these. Naming them objectifies them to some degree, and through this naming, our autonomy, our capacity to choose, is affirmed and enacted.

A ritual of release offers the chance to shift the relationship so that the dominant grief distress has less hold on us.

Our grief distress might be informed greatly by old unhealthy inner narratives which suddenly shoot back into action. Naming this unhealthy narrative is another example of naming elements, ingredients, of our grief, in order to loosen their hold on us, in order to understand more fully the patterns at play in our heart and mind.

In acknowledging the elements of our grief, becoming clearer about those elements which aren’t helpful to us, a Ritual provides the vessel by which these elements can be returned to the wider stream of life.

A Simple Ritual of Release

Here’s a simple Ritual which you can use whenever you need to. It’s important that you allow plenty of time for everything involved, as this will help you to settle into it, to become more consciously aware of what you want and need, and to release. Better still, set a date and time in your calendar for the Ritual, and use time in the preceding days to make your inner preparations. You’ll find that the Ritual will be richer for it.

• • Choose your setting. Outdoors if possible: a woodland edge, a quiet beach, a garden corner. Indoors works too, if you can create a small altar with natural objects.
  • Gather symbols of the season. Leaves, acorns, conkers, a flower at the end of its summer beauty, a small bowl of water, a candle, a stone. These simple items remind us of cycles of life and death.
  • Name what you are ready to release. This could be a phrase written on paper or something you hold silently in your heart.

The Ritual of Release

1. 1. Ground yourself. Take three deep breaths. Feel your feet steady against earth or floor.
   2. Acknowledge your current situation. Speak aloud or silently: “I honour and give thanks for what has been. I acknowledge my grief, my love, and my loss.”
   3. Name what it is that you’re releasing. Hold your written words, or hold the thought in your heart. Speak it: “I release the weight of … It is time to return it to the flow of life.”
   4. Offer it back. If you are outdoors in a park or other open space, place your paper, carefully shredded, beneath a deep pile of fallen leaves, or bury it lightly. Indoors, you might burn it safely in a dish, or submerge it in water. If you have a garden, you might burn it there.
   5. Seal the act with a short affirmation in which you acknowledge your life. Light your candle or place your stone on the altar. Whisper: “I am held by Earth. I walk with lighter steps.”

After the Ritual

Rituals create ripples. Just as in Shamanic Healing, the healing works at depth, and over time, this Ritual may leave you feeling immediately lighter or, equally, unsettled. Neither is amiss.

It can be helpful to recall the ritual and to honour it in your heart and mind as you go about the days following. Patience and gentleness towards yourself is very important here. Allow the benefits of this simple ritual to flow through you. Take your time. Walk in nature, eat well, perhaps keep brief notes about how you feel, about things which catch your inner and outer attention. Dreams too may have significance and relevance – they continue the work which the ritual has started.

And remember: releasing is not once-for-all. Like the trees, we may shed in layers. Every autumn brings new leaves to release. Each ritual, however simple, participates in this great cycle.

And?

Releasing some elements of our grief distress isn’t about forgetting our loved one who died. Sometimes we cling to certain difficult emotions because they connect us directly with our loved one and we fear that if we release these emotions, however dark and difficult they are, we’ll lose the connection with the person we miss so much, and love.

We might think of it as clearing a room of unnecessary items in order to make space and welcome for a friend coming to stay. Releasing distress clears inner space so that we may begin to carry our loved one with us in our heart and mind into the future, and not leave them behind.

If you’re grieving, then, this Autumn, may you find courage to set down what is too heavy, honour what has passed, and step into the seasons to come with a steadier heart.

On the Threshold

Susan

P.S. I’d love to hear from you if what I’ve written here finds ground in your own heart and mind.