These days, it seems we’ve collectively decided that grief should look a certain way. We expect it to arrive after a death, follow a predictable arc, come with designated rituals, and eventually gradually fade into the background of our lives. Yet, anyone who has experienced loss (which is all of us) knows that grief rarely cooperates with these expectations or follows this timeline.
Grief can show up when we’re watching someone we love slowly change. It can arrive when relationships end without closure. It can surface when the life we planned for doesn’t go the way we had hoped. And perhaps most confusingly, it can appear before a loss has even happened, leaving us feeling guilty about mourning something that’s still technically present.
Our culture desperately needs to understand that grief shows up in more ways than we acknowledge, and we’re doing ourselves a disservice by pretending otherwise.
We live in a grief-phobic society. We’ve collectively decided that grief should be tidy, predictable, and brief. There should be a funeral, some casseroles, a reasonable period of sadness, and then you should be “back to normal.” Yet, grief isn’t tidy, it doesn’t follow timelines, and it certainly doesn’t limit itself to death.
When Grief Arrives Early
Recently, a husband I was supporting after his wife died shared with me that he felt like he wasn’t grieving enough following her death. In talking with him, I helped him see that he had been grieving her loss bit by bit. She had Alzheimer’s for 10 years and I helped him see that he had been saying goodbye slowly over time. What he was experiencing is what’s called anticipatory grief: the mourning that begins before a loss actually happens.
Anticipatory grief is the heaviness you carry when you know your elderly dog will die soon, or when you realize your marriage is ending, or when you’re watching someone you love face a terminal illness. The relationship is still present, but you’re already feeling its absence.
This type of grief can be particularly isolating because people around you might not understand why you’re sad when your loved one is “still here.” But here’s the truth: you’re not just grieving the eventual loss. You’re grieving all the small losses happening right now. The conversations you can no longer have. The recognition that’s already gone. The future you’d imagined together that’s shifting or disappearing entirely.
Our culture doesn’t know what to do with anticipatory grief. Traditionally, there’s been no ceremony for it, no acknowledged ritual, no designated time when friends bring you meals and hold space for your tears. So it goes underground, unwitnessed and unacknowledged, adding to the weight you’re already carrying. And yet, if we can find ways to acknowledge the grief as it appears, even when it’s in anticipation of a loss, we do ourselves a service in validating our feelings and emotions.
The Power of Grief Rituals
This is where ritual becomes essential, and I want to be clear about what I mean by ritual. For me, a ritual is an intentional, symbolic action that hopes to create meaning in our lives. Ritual offers us space to process our emotions; it creates a container where grief can be acknowledged, witnessed, and held. Ritual gives us permission to name our losses, even the ones our culture doesn’t recognize. It provides structure during times when everything feels chaotic and uncertain.
Grief rituals help us realize that the small losses matter, even though they might not be the kind of losses people usually recognize. They create space for grief to exist alongside daily life, witnessed and honoured rather than pushed aside.
Making Space for What Matters
As a humanist celebrant, end of life doula, and grief coach, I’ve learned that the most powerful rituals aren’t elaborate or complex. They’re often the ones that feel true to our unique experiences and specific needs.
Perhaps it’s lighting a candle on the anniversary of a miscarriage, taking a daily walk with your aging dog, writing letters you’ll never send, or creating art that captures feelings you can’t articulate. What matters isn’t the form the ritual takes but the intention behind it. It’s about creating moments where you can be fully present with whatever you’re feeling without judgment or expectation.
We need to become less afraid of grief, both our own and others’. We need to expand our understanding of what counts as loss and what deserves mourning. And we need rituals that meet us where we are, not where we think we should be.
Because here’s what I know after years of sitting with people in their grief – when we create space for loss to be acknowledged, when we witness it rather than try to fix it, something profound happens. Not healing in the sense of making it disappear, but healing in the sense of integration, of learning to carry loss in a way that still allows for joy, connection, and growth.
Your grief matters, whatever form it takes. It deserves space, ritual, and witness. And you deserve support in creating practices that honour both your losses and your resilience.
If you’re navigating grief and looking for rituals that feel meaningful to you, I invite you to explore the Be Ceremonial App where we offer curated grief rituals to choose from or the ability to create your own personalized rituals that are unique to your circumstances. Because healing doesn’t happen on a set timeline; it happens when we slow down and carve out time and space to honour the experience of being human.