Grief and the Path Back to Ourselves
~3,500 WORDS (~13 MINS READ)
Definition of Grief :
the emotional, physical, and spiritual response to any significant loss or change, a natural and universal process that reshapes how we understand ourselves and the world.
Opening the Door to Grief
Why Grief Arises and How It Shapes Us
Grief arrives like the tide, yet not always with the same beauty or rhythm. Sometimes it comes quietly, almost shy, and other times it breaks into your life without the slightest warning. It rises and falls, recedes and returns, and never once in the same shape. Grief changes the inner landscape in ways we don’t always see at first. A memory can pull it forward the way the moon pulls water. Stress roughens its edges. A moment of safety softens it again. Long before the mind catches up, the body begins speaking in its own unmistakable language. Most people I sit with describe grief not as something dramatic, but as something that quietly reshapes the air around them.
We often imagine grief belongs only to death, but grief appears whenever love, identity, meaning, or stability changes form. It comes with divorce, betrayal, spiritual collapse, trauma, community loss, or the quiet dissolving of parts of ourselves long before we can name what is happening. Grief touches those who have been harmed and those who later recognize the harm they once caused. It lives in subtle moments and in overwhelming waves. It belongs to the personal, the ancestral, and the unseen spaces between them.
I have known grief in many forms. War and its long shadow. Identities dissolving before I was ready to let them go. Partnerships ending with silence or sorrow. Dreams collapsing the moment I reached for them. Friends I could not save. Loved ones dying in my arms. The sharp ache of fatherhood during seasons when distance from my children felt unbearable. Even the grief of recognizing how my own unconsciousness once hurt people I cared for. Grief humbles. It brings us back to our most human self.
Yet grief has also been one of my clearest teachers. In my work as a psychedelic guide, I watch people encounter grief after years of holding it at a distance. Psychedelics do not create grief, and they do not remove it. They reveal what was already there. They soften the walls that once kept the truth from rising. When the heart finally has room, grief becomes a path home rather than a burden.
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.”
What Grief Really Is
Understanding the Emotional and Spiritual Nature of Grief
Grief rarely arrives in one shape. It moves each time differently, as if it has its own seasons made of mind, body, and spirit, and it can look different each time it returns. It may feel like numbness one day and raw intensity the next. It may come as longing, anger, confusion, or even an unexpected sense of relief. It can vanish for months and come back in one breath. One moment it weighs you down, the next it sharpens your clarity.
Grief is the psyche releasing what it can no longer hold.
Grief is the body recalibrating after something meaningful has changed.
Grief is the spirit remembering what is true.
Many people experience grief not only emotionally but somatically. Somatic grief is the body’s way of participating in grief processing even before the mind understands what is happening. In many contemplative traditions, grief is understood as a spiritual initiation. Grief softens the protective layers of ego and dissolves the illusions we once relied on. Grief brings us closer to the essence of who we are. Grief is not the opposite of healing. Grief is one of the ways healing reveals itself.
The Science of Grief
How the Body Responds to Loss
The body often responds to loss long before the mind understands what has happened. Cortisol rises. Breath tightens. Sleep becomes shallow or fragmented. Concentration scatters. The brain is trying to reorganize around an inner reality that has suddenly shifted. These shifts reflect how grief and the nervous system stay in constant dialogue, often signaling the need for deeper grief support long before a person asks for it.
Tears, shaking, fatigue, long exhalations, pressure in the chest, waves of heat, or a sudden collapse into emotion are not signs of failure. They are the body metabolizing what has been carried without expression.
I learned this during a moment when I received traumatic news. My body collapsed before a single thought formed. My knees hit the ground. My breath broke open. I sobbed in a way that felt instinctive and ancient. When the wave passed, a strange clarity arrived. I felt more capable of facing what was true. The body had already responded to what I had been resisting. I remember noticing the feel of the floor under my palms, oddly grounding, like my body was anchoring itself before my mind could make sense of anything.
Grief moves like nature. It spirals rather than proceeds in a line. When a tree loses a limb, the entire ecosystem adjusts around the loss. Leaves, soil, insects, sunlight, and shadow all reorganize. Nothing heals in isolation. Grief works the same. It is ecological work occurring inside the human body.
The Many Forms of Grief We Carry
Types of Grief People Commonly Experience
Most people carry grief without realizing it, and it often shows up in ways we do not immediately recognize. It can appear as irritability, withdrawal, anxiety, a quiet loss of meaning, emotional distance, or the sense of living just a few inches away from oneself. These patterns appear across many forms of loss and often become the foundation of a person’s grief journey.
Everyday grief includes:
loss of predictability or stability in daily life
shifts in family roles or relational dynamics
ruptured relationships and unresolved endings
vocational collapse or identity dissolution
spiritual disorientation and loss of meaning
the residue of trauma, including war and chronic stress
grief for earlier versions of ourselves
We also carry ancestral grief, collective grief, and ecological grief. There is the ache for the earth, the ache for the suffering of others, and the ache for the world we know is possible but not yet here.
When grief becomes unbearable, the psyche may reach for despair. This does not mean a person truly wants to die. It often means the pain has exceeded what the nervous system can hold alone. In these moments, presence and professional support are essential.
Grief distorts perception when it goes unrecognized. When it is understood, it becomes a doorway into compassion.
“What we resist persists.”
How Psychedelics Reveal and Support Grief
Psychedelic Therapy and Grief Processing
People often turn to psychedelic therapy for grief when traditional approaches help them cope but cannot reach the deeper layers waiting beneath the surface. Psychedelics don’t manufacture grief. Instead, they uncover what has lived inside us for years. In that softened state, long-hidden truths can rise without overwhelming the heart. The walls that once felt necessary begin to loosen.
A person can finally meet what once felt too heavy to touch. Psychedelics open up new ways to be and see, but it is integration that teaches someone how to walk through it. Many people seek psychedelic-assisted therapy for grief when traditional approaches cannot reach the deeper layers waiting for expression.
How psychedelics support grief
lower emotional resistance so the heart can open safely
support the body in completing long-stalled emotional cycles
widen perspective beyond immediate emotional pain
reveal meaning beneath loss or disorientation
reconnect people to compassion, forgiveness, and relational repair
Many people grieve childhood wounds, ruptured relationships, lost purpose, or the parts of themselves they hid in order to survive. Psychedelics open the door. Long form integration turns insight into embodied change and allows what was once avoided to become part of a coherent inner life.
Examples of integration in everyday life
someone reaches out for an honest conversation once the cost of silence becomes too heavy
another person steps back from overwork after grief reveals the preciousness of time
someone begins tending the inner child through somatic work or journaling
another creates simple rituals of remembrance to honor what was lost
someone finally makes a decision they had avoided for many years
Insight becomes behavior. Behavior becomes embodiment. Grief becomes a teacher.
When Grief Goes Unfelt
Signs of Unprocessed or Hidden Grief
Unintegrated grief rarely stays quiet. It tends to move through a person sideways, showing up in places that don’t immediately look like sorrow. I often hear people say they feel “off” without any clear reason, and more often than not, grief is sitting quietly underneath. It can shape behavior, distort perception, or push someone into patterns that seem disconnected from what actually hurts. When grief has no language or place to move, it finds its own pathways.
emotional distortion such as irritability, mood swings, or sudden shutdown
relational disconnection through avoidance, mistrust, or numbness
loss of meaning that reflects inner reorganization
identity fragmentation expressed as overworking or hiding behind roles
physical symptoms such as fatigue, chest tightness, headaches, or disrupted sleep
projection through blame or judgment when grief has no language
Recognizing these patterns does not remove the sorrow, but it softens the shame around them. Understanding creates space for compassion to emerge where self-criticism once lived.
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”
How to Work With Grief in Daily Life
Practical Ways to Support Your Grief Journey
Grief rarely announces what it needs. It moves in its own rhythm and speaks in a language the mind doesn’t always understand. Working with grief is less about doing something correctly and more about creating the conditions where the heart, body, and psyche can slowly unfold. Small gestures matter.
Quiet rituals matter. Honest conversations matter. Healing comes through expression, not suppression. Grief follows its own rhythms, rarely matching the pace the mind wants to keep. These practices offer simple ways to begin working with grief while staying connected to your grief journey and your own nervous system.
Create intentional space for grief
Even a few minutes of quiet can give grief permission to rise. This might look like placing a hand over your heart, breathing slowly, or stepping outside to feel the sky and remember you are not alone.Move the body gently
Walking, stretching, shaking, or dancing helps the nervous system metabolize what words cannot. Grief often shows itself through the body long before it becomes emotional.Speak sorrow aloud to someone you trust
Being witnessed softens isolation. When grief is met with care rather than judgment, the body settles and the heart finds coherence.Let tears come without explanation
Tears reorganize the inner world. They are not a sign of regression. They are a natural form of release.Spend time in nature
Forests, water, and open sky model how loss becomes renewal. Nature regulates the nervous system and reminds us that change is part of life, not a failure of it.Seek containers that can hold you
Grief circles, ceremony, somatic therapy, and relational spaces offer support for what is too heavy to carry alone. Containment helps transform overwhelm into something that can be digested.Allow grief to move in waves
Grief does not arrive in a straight line. It cycles like tide and season. Trust the rhythm rather than trying to force completion.
A resource I often recommend is The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller. His work returns grief to the communal and spiritual fabric where it belongs and reminds us that sorrow is not a private burden but a natural expression of being human.
Working with grief is not about strength. It is about staying close to what is true and tender inside you. In that closeness, you discover capacities you did not know were there.
A Simple Guide to Grief Ceremony and Ritual
Rituals and Practices for Healing Through Grief
Grief is sacred work. It carries a quiet intelligence and often appears as another face of love. Ceremony gives grief a place to land. It creates a container where sorrow can move with dignity instead of being rushed, explained away, or carried in silence. Healing grief through ceremony is not about escaping sorrow but meeting it in a container that allows it to breathe.
Recently, I sat in a grief ceremony held by someone else. The space was simple and quiet, yet wide enough for grief to show its many faces. At times, the sorrow felt childlike and tender. At other moments, it felt ancient, like a presence that has accompanied humanity since the beginning. There was a moment when someone beside me reached for a tissue, and we both gently smiled through our tears. It reminded me that grief carries tenderness too. When we give grief room, we begin to feel the parts of ourselves that wake up in its presence, and we understand them with greater compassion.
Ceremony does not remove grief. Ceremony teaches us how to relate to it with reverence. It helps us meet sorrow as something that deserves presence rather than avoidance. For those who want structure and safety around ceremonial work, my Ceremony Readiness Guide offers a supportive framework for preparing internally and relationally so grief can move with more clarity and grounding. Ways to bring grief into the ceremony:
Write a letter to what has been lost
Offer it to fire, water, or earth as a gesture of release, acknowledgment, or gratitude.Create a small grief altar
Place photos, objects, stones, or symbols that help the heart recognize both what it longs for and what it honors.Sit in prayer or meditation
Let grief reveal itself in its own timing. Ceremony asks for presence rather than performance.Journal what grief shows you
Give the inner landscape a place to speak. Writing often reveals what the voice is not yet ready to say aloud.Share your sorrow with someone who can hold it
Speak with a therapist, friend, guide, or trusted companion so what you carry does not remain inside you alone.
An Ecological and Mystical View of Grief
A Wider Perspective on Grief and Belonging
Grief is not only personal. It is ecological, ancestral, and spiritual, moving through us the way weather shifts across a landscape. No tide returns in the same shape, and no wave of grief is exactly like the last.
In nature, decay is not failure. What falls becomes nourishment. Forests depend on this constant exchange. The human heart works in a similar way. Grief brings us back to the ground of being. It softens pride, loosens old certainties, and shows us what is essential.
During ceremony I often share that grief is more like a companion than an adversary. It reflects our capacity to care. It ties us to our own losses and to the losses carried by others, by our ancestors, and by the living world. We grieve as those who have been harmed, as those who have caused harm, as witnesses, and as descendants of stories that never fully resolved. When the heart is open, grief becomes evidence of connection.
Mystical traditions describe grief as a kind of initiation. It refines perception. It clears the inner senses. It prepares the soul for deeper truth. In this way, grief becomes part of the spiritual path itself, one of the thresholds we cross into a more honest life.
There are nights when the moon brightens the sky and grief rises without warning. It does not ask to be solved. It asks to be felt. The moon does not remove the darkness around it. It simply helps us see what has been there all along.
Grief carries an ancient intelligence. It draws us into deeper belonging — with ourselves, with each other, and with the wider world. To grieve is to acknowledge that something mattered. Grief is the heart’s participation in the intimacy of being alive.
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
Prompts for Exploring Grief More Deeply
Questions to Help Grief Speak More Clearly
Grief often needs an invitation before it will speak. These questions are meant to open a quiet doorway inside, allowing truth to rise without being pushed. You may answer them slowly over days or simply hold them in your awareness and notice what begins to move.
What is grief trying to teach me about what I value?
Grief often shines a light on where meaning lives and what the heart refuses to let go of.What part of me is asking to be softened or reclaimed?
Grief may reveal a neglected truth or a forgotten aspect of self that is ready to return.Where in my body does grief live and how does it want to move?
Sensation is often the first language of healing. The body speaks long before the mind is ready to name what it knows.
These questions can help you meet grief not as an enemy, but as a companion guiding you toward deeper understanding.
Integrating Grief Through Ceremony and Coaching
How Guided Support Helps Grief Transform
In my ceremony programs and long arc coaching programs, grief often appears as a reliable sign that a person is returning to authenticity. These journeys unfold over many seasons, sometimes years, and people often choose to weave together ceremony and integration coaching so the insights that rise in expanded states can mature into embodied truth. The ceremony may reveal new possibilities. Integration is where grief slowly teaches its lessons and reshapes the inner architecture from the inside out.
With steady relational support, people learn to carry grief with more grace and less fear. Over time grief reveals the deeper intelligence it has been holding.
Grief becomes a guide for decision making
It clarifies what aligns with your deeper values.Grief clarifies priorities
Much of what once felt urgent falls away.Grief deepens compassion
As you understand your own sorrow, you become more capable of meeting the pain of others.Grief strengthens integrity
It becomes harder to live out of alignment with what is real.Grief reveals purpose
Loss often uncovers what the soul has long wished to express.Grief reconnects you to soul
It brings you back to the essence beneath identity and role.
This is why grief coaching and ceremonial integration often work together, offering relational grounding as grief transforms. When people allow grief to shape them, they become more grounded, more open, and more capable of love. Grief is not the opposite of healing. Grief is one of the ways healing arrives.
A writer, C.S. Lewis, once said that “grief is like fear.” Both arise from places where truth is trying to come forward. Grief becomes a companion when we are willing to listen.
“Grief is like fear.”
Stepping Into Life After Loss
Walking Forward With Grief as a Companion
Grief is a threshold, a season, a companion. It does not empty us. It reshapes us. When grief arrives, something inside is reorganizing toward truth. This reorganization is not collapse. It is a kind of awakening. Working with grief in this way becomes less about managing emotions and more about deepening relationship with the inner truth that is trying to emerge. Every grief journey is different, but each one asks us to move with greater honesty and to stay close to what is awakening within us.
Grief asks us to soften where we once hardened and to listen where we once turned away. It invites us to walk more slowly with the parts of ourselves that are finally ready to be seen. I have watched people come alive again in ways they never expected, not because grief disappeared, but because they learned how to walk beside it rather than against it.
If you are grieving, know that you are not meant to carry this alone. Simple grief practices for daily life can help you stay connected to your body and your heart as you move through what feels overwhelming. Let yourself be witnessed. Reaching for grief support in these moments is not a sign of weakness but a sign of devotion to your healing. Let your body participate. Let grief show you the deeper architecture of your heart. What feels unbearable at first often becomes a guide over time, revealing what is real, what is changing form, and what is asking to be reclaimed. Learning how to process grief is not an intellectual task. It is a way of being in relationship with what has changed.
This brings us back to where we began. Grief is not an interruption. Grief is one of the paths that returns us to our own humanity. It dismantles what is false so the essence of who we are can emerge again. The opening lines of this writing spoke of grief as a natural reorganization of identity and meaning. Now, at the end, we can see how deeply true that is.
If you feel called to explore this work through ceremony or coaching, you are welcome. This is not a path that tries to fix grief. It is a path that helps you walk with it until it becomes something intelligible, until the love inside it becomes impossible to ignore.
Grief does not take you away from yourself. Grief helps you find your way home.
If you recognize unprocessed grief shaping your life and want to explore it with guidance, begin with a short conversation to see whether this approach is right for you. Pass this on to someone navigating their own grief. And if the timing feels right, book a discovery call.