Healing Rituals: Powerful and Empowering

Alice Parsons Zulli

Ritual is sacred. Rituals can help to restore a sense of balance to life. Although many of us create ceremonies or rituals for one occasion or another, few understand why rituals help in adjusting to change. Even fewer understand the power of ritual to strengthen the bonds that connect us. Caregivers can influence the grieving process through ritual, customs, and traditions, and they can be sensitive to, and draw from, diverse cultures to create therapeutic rituals.

It is natural to express ourselves with physical actions. Death and grief are experiences that may make us feel helpless or out of control as emotional and physical energy is thrown out of balance. Rituals or ceremonies link physical and mental expression in a way that allows us to express and act out feelings and beliefs. 

It seems that nobody teaches us how to die or to companion someone who is dying, or how to grieve or help those who are grieving. Much of what we know about dying and grieving we have not been taught explicitly, but have "caught" from culture, religious beliefs, and family traditions. Caregivers must incorporate ritual to teach and mentor those who are embarking upon the journey of dying and grieving.

Rituals empower people emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. As medical treatment has broadened in scope and capability, cure has tended to predominate over care. But when cure is no longer a possibility, care can be offered in the most meaningful ways. This is the time for a support system that encourages living to the fullest in the time that remains. Rituals can be created to heal the mind, heart, and relationships as patients and families deal with this crisis that involves them all. The uniqueness of human beings clearly shapes the dying process and, therefore, how it will vary.

Caregivers can begin mobilizing patients' and family members' energy for grieving, an extended process that begins with diagnosis and goes on after death. Families begin by mourning the loss of their hope for a cure. Caregivers can begin at this time to strengthen communication among family members in the hope of assisting family members in sharing their pain and sadness.

Ella and John had been married 57 years. They sat together, holding hands, as the doctor gently told her that her shortness of breath was caused by the growth of tumors in her lungs. Together, John and Ella told their four daughters the sad news.

Six weeks prior to Ella's death, her daughters began collecting scraps of fabric from the sewing room where Ella had spent hundreds of hours creating warm, colorful quilts. In the hospital room they arranged the scraps in an album, allowing Ella to reminisce about each piece as they wrote the memories on three-by-five cards and inserted them next to the fabric. Ella, John, and their daughters spent many happy hours completing the album. 

The inevitability of Ella's death was very sad for John and his daughters, but they faced this loss and responded to it well. They were able to cry openly over the impending separation. They were able to honor their emotions and send messages to each other of recognition and understanding. Each was able to grieve in his or her unique way, and they allowed the pain to remind them who Ella was and what she meant in each of their lives.

A ritual is simply a function for getting in touch with that which brings wholeness and meaning. Other ways to extend a person's presence beyond death include videotapes, audiotapes, albums, memory quilts, poetry or novels depicting the person's journey of dying, or memorial funds or plaques. Healing rituals empower the dying and the bereaved to move from the fragmented, alienating, and disorienting consequences of change to a renewed sense of wholeness.

Memories play a prominent role in healing for bereaved people. Those who have experienced a death often feel as if something is missing from their lives, a part taken from the whole. The world they assumed to be safe has been shaken. Initially, memory serves as a stabilizing anchor so that the bereaved can begin to let go, a bridge between life as it was and life as it is now.

What ritual and celebration accomplish is to affirm an interconnection between our lives and the lives of others. As the bereaved move on to establish new connections, thus enlarging the web, new roles and new sources of gratification become available.

A good illustration is the Jewish custom of naming a person after someone who has died, symbolizing the perpetuation of the dead person's life. Another Jewish tradition, or ritual, dictates that at least four times a year memorial prayers be said in the synagogue for the dead and that a memorial candle be lit in the home for each deceased family member. On these occasions, the living again remember the dead and the meaning of their lives.

Caregivers in all cultures are in a position to offer healing to the bereaved through ritual. Bereaved people often have a strong desire to maintain their attachment and relationship with the deceased loved one, while society often demands rapid closure. The death of a significant person in our lives leads to a series of losses and changes in status and social networks. Is it not asking too much of the human psyche to process the multiple losses and changes in so short a time?

The bereaved need basic help and support regardless of the duration of the grieving process. They need people who will listen and care. There are many groups and organizations where the bereaved can find comfort, acceptance, and a place to tell their story. With the support of compassionate listeners the stories begin to spin a web of healing. As feelings are expressed, the bereaved see that there can be a future without the deceased. They find role models in those who have successfully connected with their changed lives. 

In her bereavement support group, Marie talked about the death of her young husband. She related how much pleasure she derived from the Mexican American tradition of spending time sitting at the graveside, often accompanied by her children and other family members.

Another group member expressed personal distaste at the idea of this ritual, but Marie explained that in her culture families often gather together, sitting by an immaculately tended grave, sharing memories and showing respect for the person who died. This tradition helped to include the children in healing rituals which they could understand, like drawing pictures and tying them to balloons to send "up" to the person who died.

In its best form, this ritual is a wonderful way for family members to help each other through a time of intense pain. Marie felt strongly that it helped her move through the painfully long hours, surrounded by loving companions.

After the sudden and unexpected death of her husband, Janis, a gifted artist, created a series of twelve paintings entitled Widow's Journey. Janis set out to paint a self-portrait as a way of working through and expressing her terrible emotional pain, but as the weeks passed she was driven to further expression of her internal rage and sadness. Eventually, she realized she had created a painting for each month of her first year of mourning. The first was blobs of paint thrown on the canvas, mostly black, brown, orange, and deep red. As the months passed and she created more paintings, the blobs began to take the form of a woman in great agony and despair. By the twelfth painting the colors were lighter, and emotional healing began to appear. Her face became more recognizable, though pain lingered in her eyes. This pain can still be seen, but to a lesser degree.

Artwork and journal writing are two powerful examples of creative self-expression, but may not appeal to everyone. Many grieving people find great comfort and healing in the use of personal symbols. Some frequently used symbols are hearts, roses, or food, which symbolize love; a tree, which symbolizes immortality; the moon, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life; and the sun, which is the symbolic source of life and energy.

Conclusion

The processing of grief reminds us how essential it is to be connected to others. And grief, like history, is a living process altered by how we navigate the experience. It is also our way of letting go of life as we knew it to be and embracing life as it will grow to be. When we experience a break in our emotional, physical or spiritual connections, we naturally seek a new balance point to restore control and harmony with life. As we accept our continued existence, our grief experience helps us find new ways, and perhaps incorporate very old ways, to create our new identity in this life.

For those who choose the role of companioning the dying and the bereaved, the road can be extraordinarily demanding, though deeply rewarding. Being a caregiver is a complex emotional task that can frustrate idealism and exhaust emotional reserves. To be an effective caregiver is to remain in a state of balance; it is important to know both when to become more emotionally involved and when to pull back. And the incorporation of healing rituals can help to restore a sense of balance when one has been changed by life.