13 Rituals To Practice For Continuing The Bonds With Your Loved Ones Who Have Passed On
The death of a loved one is one of the most profound experiences of our lives — human or pet.
It’s been all too common for people to shy away from fully benefiting from this profound time. Rituals can help ease the transition to living without them.
Rituals are actions done in purposeful ways that represent something much deeper than the acts themselves. They can be just the thing to help you begin to heal and grow from your loss.
Keep reading for 13 rituals to practice for honoring your loved ones who have passed on.
Write Letters to Your Loved One
You can do this in a journal, on the computer, or in actual letters. Write as if they’re with you and say everything you’d like them to know. What didn’t you have the chance to say that you wish you could’ve? What feelings do you want to get out?
If you choose to keep the letters, create a sacred place for them. No matter where you write them or what you do with them, these letters keep you connected with your loved one in the present moment.
Release Your Letters With Intention
Start with an intention. Quiet your mind and get into your heart then state, out loud or in your head, what your desire is for this letter. Do you want the messages to reach your loved one? Do you want the emotions to be released and transmuted?
If you’ve written your letters on paper you can tear them up or burn them — safely. Alternatively, in a journal, collage with them, paint over them, or come up with your own creative way!
Keep Photos Of Your Loved Ones Around
This may seem absurdly obvious, but there may be people who make you feel uncomfortable about keeping photos around.
This keeps us connected with our loved ones and can help us remember ways that person continues to influence our lives.
Light A Candle For Special Events
Lighting a candle with your loved one in mind has a certain sacredness about it. You will certainly be thinking of them on big days.
There is no reason to keep that inside or deny it. So honor yourself and them this way.
Use Your Imagination When Making Tough Decisions
Big decisions can be overwhelming and when you’ve lost the person you would’ve talked it over with, it can be especially hard.
Imagining a conversation with them, what they might’ve said, and the advice they might’ve given can help you feel connected. You may be inspired with an extra insight to help make big life choices a little easier.
Talk About Your Loved One With Someone New
New friends, a significant other, or children, who never had the opportunity to meet your loved one when they were alive may come along afterward.
Share stories or photos of your loved one with new people. This way your loved one’s legacy continues as your share and you continue to keep them in your life moving forward.
Live In A Way They Can Be Proud
Be it a spouse, a parent, grandparent, child, or friend, we often struggle knowing our loved one won’t be there for accomplishments and milestones.
Take the time to recognize how your loved one would be proud of you for a specific accomplishment. This can be comforting for you and remind you how you continue to be connected to your loved one.
Complete A Project They Were Working On
Maybe it was a project around the house, a piece of artwork, a team they coached, or a volunteer project they were involved in. Consider picking up where they left off.
This can help you learn new and wonderful things about your loved ones, continue your connection with them in the present, and continue their legacy.
Take A Trip To A Place They Were Born Or Grew Up In
Many people have found comfort in this. Death can make us realize how short life is. This can help you travel in a way that is meaningful.
On trips like this, you’ll feel close to your loved ones, imagining their experiences and their journey in their time.
It can be tough, certainly bittersweet, but for some people, it’s very comforting. A great example of this is the movie “The Way”.
Plan For The Anniversary
Though it may feel like everyone else has moved on, do not feel embarrassed or self-conscious about planning something in memory of your loved one on the anniversary of their death, or another special day.
Be it a small, personal ritual like sending up a balloon or lighted lanterns or a larger event that gathers others with you. Find something meaningful that works for you.
Meaningful Items
You can’t keep everything; however, keeping a few meaningful items can be extremely powerful. This could be an item they owned or one they gave you.
See if you can still smell their cologne or perfume on it or even sense their energy. This could be tremendous comfort for you and either way they can make you feel close to your loved one.
Nature
Go to the places in nature where your loved one enjoyed. Sit in silence there and connect with them. See if you can feel them in the wind or the trees, the water or the mountains. Just be.
Sense Their Presence
It’s common to feel the presence of your loved one — it may just be a feeling, it may be a specific type of wind or bird, or countless other things that seem to be a sign of your loved one’s presence.
It’s not weird or strange. It may be a phenomenon you don’t fully understand, however, you have a bond with that person and just because their physical body has ceased to function, doesn’t mean their energy has to.
Feeling your loved one’s presence has been shown in studies to ease the sadness accompanying grief.
So when you feel your loved one’s presence, feel it without apology or any worry that you’re crazy! This is a normal and helpful way we continue bonds with our loved ones.
Why Are Rituals Important With Grief?
Mourning rituals have also been psychologically proven through studies to help ease the pain and burden of grief and connect others through a time of loss.
With spirituality on the rise, many people are looking for ways to celebrate their loved ones and also move through grief in new, unique, and meaningful ways.
Rituals, which are mindfully present actions, trigger a very specific feeling in mourners of connection with their loved one.
After people perform a ritual, they’re more likely to report thinking that “things were in check” and less likely to feel “helpless,” “powerless,” or “out of control,” according to a research study done by researchers Michael I. Norton and Francesca Gino at Harvard Business School.
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Those who are grieving cannot raise the dead or change the laws of nature, however, by performing their own private rituals, the bereaved can regain their footing in a world that has become a little emptier than it was before.
How Do Rituals Help Us When Grieving?
We humans like things to stay the same. Even if we are open to change, change can be very difficult.
There is nothing more disruptive than the death of someone you love, someone whose existence is part and parcel of your own. When those people die, we are left floundering.
The depth and breadth of your grief depend on the connectedness you feel to the person who has died — your spiritual, emotional, or physical connectedness, and often, your perception of your very existence.
When being told you might jump between different stages of grief or tasks, it’s hard not to feel like your grief was supposed to flow nicely through stages and come to an endpoint.
These theories all lead to a final phase that gives a sense of closure, detachment from the loss or moving on. If it doesn’t then you feel something must be wrong with you.
Grief may not be about working through a linear process that ends with ‘acceptance’ or a ‘new life’, where you’ve moved on or compartmentalized your loved one’s memory.
Rather, when a loved one dies you slowly find ways to adjust and redefine your relationship with that person and rituals can help you do that in a very healthy way.
What Are Public Grieving Rituals?
Public rituals are those that are shared with others who are either close to the deceased or to the family members.
They help to honor the person who died, the people they touched and the journey their life took them on. They bring into reality a sense of closure for the person’s loved ones.
Here are some public grieving rituals:
Funerals, Memorials Services, and Wakes
Traditional, and symbolic means of expressing our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about the death of someone loved. Rich in history and full of symbolism, the funeral ceremony helps us begin to meet a number of our fundamental needs as mourners.
A Tree Planting
Trees represent the beauty, vibrancy, and continuity of life. A specially planted and located tree can honor the person who died and serve as a perennial memorial. This can be particularly helpful if there is no gravesite or cremation niche to visit.
A Candle Lighting Ceremony
Place a lit candle in the center of a table, as a symbol of the Light in the person who died. Form a circle around the table, with each person holding his or her own small candle.
Have each person, in turn, light his or her candle by holding it to the center candle’s flame. Symbolizing the Light shared and radiating as it affected each person.
Participants are invited to share a memory of the person who died. In the end, play a song or read a poem or prayer in memory.
Scatter The Ashes
If the person was cremated, gather with other loved ones and go to a natural surrounding that was enjoyed by the deceased.
Say a prayer or read a poem in their honor and gently allow the ashes to cover the natural area — whether it’s a body of water, a forest, or a mountain region the person loved.
What Is The Continuing Bonds Model?
Continuing bonds theory is an expanded view of the bereavement process. It works towards normalizing a healthy continuing relationship with loved ones even after they’ve died.
Rather than disengaging from the deceased as the final stage of the grieving process, the focus is on how we contend with sudden losses or extended and anticipated deaths of a loved one suffering from a terminal illness.
The idea of disengaging from a relationship almost has the air of forcing yourself to deny it having any influence in your life going forward.
With the rise of a more spiritual outlook on life, many are understanding that while the physical body has come to its end, the energy that animated that body hasn’t.
The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed — only converted from one form of energy to another.
So more people are accepting that while their loved one has transitioned to another state, their relationship with them has merely changed. Grieving is a process of allowing acceptance of that change.
One of the earliest and most prominent figures to put forth the notion that continuing bonds could be adaptive was John Bowlby (1980).
He proposed a continued relationship to the deceased could provide a sense of continuity in the life of the bereaved, and could even help facilitate a healthy adaptation to loss.
There’s so much the experience of grieving can help you learn about yourself, loss, and relationships. Thereby, healing your soul and growing through that loss.
No words we could possibly utter capture our feelings so well at these moments. The symbolism of rituals provides us a means to express our beliefs and feelings when words alone will not do those beliefs and feelings justice.
I hope this article has helped to give you insights and ideas to incorporate into your grieving process. Please leave me a comment and if you know 2 or 3 people that could also benefit, I invite you to share it with them.
