Grief Box

As Samhain draws near, many of us are thinking about ways to connect with our ancestors. This is the season when all that’s no longer in service to life begins to die. A time when we harvest all the remaining fruits and seeds, full of dormant life force just waiting for it’s turn at the wheel.

A time for connecting with all that is real and true and enduring. We long for ancient rhythms that ground us in purpose and secure attachment. For traditions that nourish our spirits and our felt sense of belonging. Cultivating relationships with our ancestors is a powerful way of connecting with a deep well of stability and resource.

So many of us are just waking up to the power of cultivating a connection with the old ones who made our lives possible. It’s especially potent medicine as we move through this portal of collapse of systems of power that are making life on earth untenable. We are entering a time in human history of uncertainty and instability.

As we begin to relate to the old ones, it can open us to deep pain and grief alongside all the many gifts. We receive their wisdom in one hand and their wounds in the other. I’ll share with you a practice I have of creating a grief box so that helps you tend to those relationships with a bit more containment than an altar. It allows for some space and some choice around entering into your grief.

When my mom died, I intuitively began this practice of tending to a grief box. As I was going through her belongings, there were certain objects that connected me with intense emotion. I couldn't part with them but I couldn't be with them all the time either. So I began to gather them inside an old beautiful box she had.

When I had the space to be with them, I opened my box and let all the emotions pour through me. I massaged all of my senses with memory-inducing stimulation. I played music that we shared. I sniffed the hand towel that smelled of her home. I caressed my cheek with a lock of her hair. I listened to an old recording of her voice. I looked at her passport and thought about all the dreams she never got to fulfill. I cried and journaled about all the things we never got to share, all the sorrow I was holding. And then when I was spent, I said goodnight to my mother and closed my box.

In time, I began to integrate. Each object held her energy and she became a part of me. As I held her objects, I meditated on our connection, I let my heart open to her memory until I felt her love and her pain, her wisdom and her wounds, living and breathing inside me. In time, opening the box connected me with a deep feeling of being loved and held.

Some of you may be familiar with the practice of tending to an altar. This idea is similar except it offers a bit more containment. If you already have a practice of keeping an altar and feel called to use this form instead of the box, I encourage you to follow that call with the strong suggestion that you create a separate altar for your grief tending.

To begin, you will select a box or an altar space. Clean it and prepare it in any way that you feel called, perhaps a smoke cleanse. This is a time for preparing the slate. In the weeks to come you will begin to call in what objects hold the energy of what wants to be integrated.

Allow your intuition and all of your senses to be your guide as you gather objects for your grief box. Choose objects that open your heart. It might be that a certain color, scent, or texture really captivates you. If your grief is calling you to non-lineage kin, to more-than-human kin, to milk lines rather than blood lines*, follow it. Trust this deeper knowing. There is no wrong way to engage with this practice. You get to make it your own.

Spend time with your box when you have the space to. Listen to the stories the objects tell you. Listen to the stories your heart tells you as you connect with your box. It might open you up to all that really matters most in life, to all that is real and true and enduring.

If you are moved to try this practice, reach out and let me know how it lands for you. I would love to hear from you.

*blood lines- lineage kin, milk lines- non-familial kin that has nourished you, attribution to Alexis Pauline Gumbs