Mary Magdalene and Grief

Pope Francis died on Easter Monday, April 21, 2025, at the age of 88 at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. Francis had served as pope, the head of the Catholic Church, for twelve years. The cause of his death was officially registered as a stroke followed by irreversible cardiac arrest.

More than 250,000 people came to view Francis during the three-day public viewing of his lying-in-state. Francis’s Requiem Mass was celebrated on 26 April, five days after his death, and he was buried at Santa Maria Maggiore.

French-Argentine nun Sister Geneviève Jeanningros, a personal friend of Pope Francis, was let unusually close his coffin to pay her respects. Afterwards a photo was published of her tiny figure, dwarfed by the mass of white robes filing passed in orderly rows beside her. Amongst all of the pageantry and ritual she stood, hands held together, head slightly bowed, weeping.

Sister Geneviève had been a friend of Pope Francis for several decades. Their bond was formed through mutual focus on service. Sister Geneviève brought the homeless, the sick, members of the trans community to him and he welcomed them all with quiet compassion. Sister Geneviève carried the forgotten on the edges of society, directly to the heart of the Church, and Francis opened the door.

Sister Geneviève’s presence broke through with something intimately recognisable in the way she moved, small and insistent, not with force but with love. She was more than a lone nun, breaking all Vatican protocol to stand close to the casket of her dear friend, Pope Francis.

Sister Geneviève standing as a solitary figure farewelling her friend Pope Francis was not just the human face of a grief felt by so many. She was also the presence, the woman who stands firm in the face on inconsolable suffering. Sister Geneviève was not supposed to be there in a male-dominated establishment, inside a space for clergy only.

I have spent the past five years searching for traces of the Divine Mother, the Feminine that was intentionally erased. I have learned how the ancient Great Mother was taken over by the great goddesses, how these temples were either converted or a new church was built on top of ancient sacred sites. But somehow the knowledge continued with stone masons and artists hiding Her in sight, in the architecture, the stone, the carved symbols and spirals.

And now, at the Vatican, in full view of the world the Divine Feminine shows Herself again through a small, fierce nun who weeps at the side of her friend. The Divine Feminine is expressed in this woman who ignored protocols, crossed boundaries, and offered her heartfelt presence. This is the Divine Feminine who will not be unseen, silenced, unheard. She will not stay hidden. She has always been here. The Sacred Thread runs unbroken through it all.

She was the Divine Feminine, breaking through yet again. This is what the feminine looks like in power – not aggressive, not loud, but unwavering. Open. Vulnerable. Deeply powerful.

In Sister Geneviève I saw Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her tears in the day leading to his arrest. I saw Mary Magdalene refusing to leave when Jesus was arrested, while all the disciples fled and went into hiding. I saw Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross, staying present at great personal cost. I saw Mary Magdalene with the three Marys at the entrance to the tomb. I saw what has always been there, quietly, fiercely, lovingly present.

Death and Grief

Western culture does not do well with death. We no longer have rituals and practises to support the grieving. We seem to find the whole idea of death uncomfortable, living in denial of our own essential mortality. In the Near East there were ways to understand death and to help those grieving through their darkest days. We are out of practice.

Modern Western society struggles with the elderly. In the West, we are obsessed with wanting to live forever, so we try to halt time. Death is seen as the end of life with nothing to come, and so we dread and resist death. But this means we live in constant fear of death, the inevitable end to all life. To the ancients, death was inextricably intertwined with life.

This image is ‘The Three Marys’ (1906–1911) by Edwin Austin Abbey.

Many people on a spiritual path believe that if they meditate or to yoga or pray or chant somehow this will prevent them from illness or disease injury or death. There is a conscious or unconscious belief that a spiritual path gives us a free pass on the challenges of life. Many people on a spiritual path believe that sickness is a failure they brought on themselves. We have forgotten that life inevitably brings death.

Grief is felt by every single one of us at some time in our lives. We all die. We all have loved ones who die. Death and dying are part of life, whether we like it or not.

“There’s this idea in Western society that it’s a terrible tragedy to die as if it’s bad luck or bad management. And maybe the mark of someone who hasn’t quite got the stuff. It’s so unfair. It’s really so disrespectful. And also, delusional. Because we’re all dying all the time.” Tilda Swinton on death.

We all think that illness, disease, death will not happen to us, that if we do yoga or meditation or affirmations, we will be exempt from our mortality.

Our spirituality does not shield us from life. It does not prevent challenges coming to us. But our spirituality can help us ride the roller coaster of life with more ease and grace.

This image is a detail from ‘Three Marys at the foot of the Cross’ painted by an unknown artist known as The Crucifixion Master of the Urbino Coronation, Italian (Riminese) dating to the 1360s. We see the intense emotions of sadness so great a burden that the central woman collapses and is held up by her companions.

Ancient Grief Eating Practices

My understanding is that in the ancient world there were goddesses who offered a channel to process and express grief through lamentation practices. These goddesses were role models for how to explore and express grief, with annual festivals for cathartic lamentations. The goddess Inanna (Akkadian Ishtar) mourned her beloved Dumuzi (Akkadian Tammuz). Isis and her sister Nephthys lamented when they could not resurrect their brother Osiris. Mary Magdalene grieved when Jesus was crucified.

Image is my photo from Dendera Temple of Hathor of Nephthys on the left and Isis on the right with wings attempting to resurrect their beloved Osiris. In Egypt I saw temple art and tomb art that depicted the death and resurrection rituals of Osiris, presided over by Isis and her sister Nephthys. I also saw morning procession where mainly women were depicted grieving the deceased.

The belief that our spirituality will prevent suffering is a modern concept. It did not exist in an ancient religion. Part of the annual rituals was a grief ritual where the population was invited to grieve all the losses of the previous year.

Sumerian and Egyptian grief rituals were still part of annual ceremonies in the first century. There was no Jewish grief ritual but annual rituals to Tammuz and Osiris were re-enacted throughout the region, even inside the Jerusalem Temple itself.

These grief rituals gave people the space to be fully human, to grieve their own losses and to feel supported and acknowledged by their broader community. These rituals were ultimately woven into the Christian mysteries.

Then there were other goddesses who were grief eaters. These goddesses consumed their devotees’ grief, taking away or at least lightening, the burden of grief.

In ancient cultures, it was the divine feminine who oversaw death, not only at times as the bringer of death but more importantly, as the guardian of the dead, the protector of all those that have gone from the earthly realm. Death was woman’s work. The goddesses assisted the living by access to the great deep feminine darkness with the power to eat our grief so that we can have a good death, descend to the underworld, and pass through into the cosmos.

Ancient grief rituals gave people the space to be fully human, to grieve their own losses and to feel supported and acknowledged by their broader community. These rituals were ultimately woven into the Christian mysteries.

The image is from the interior of the coffin of Imenemipet (1069-945 BCE). Nephthys appears on the left and Isis appears on the right. Between them is a cartouche of Osiris’ name. The kite forms of each goddess can be seen behind their human forms.

The Priestesses of Isis

Priestesses were not constrained by the patriarchal traditions of the time. They were known for sensual anointing rituals that gave a man his kingship, or they anointed those who were about to die or receive spiritual initiation. Priestesses presided over grief rituals and funerary rites with weeping and lamentation and were known for their exuberant displays of love and affection and sorrow.

I took this photo in the Tomb of Menna (TT62), a scribe and supervisor of lands belonging to the king and a temple of Amun who lived under the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1292 BCE) during the reign of Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III (1419-1372 BCE).

In ‘Journey of the Priestess: The Priestess Traditions of the Ancient World: A Journey of Spiritual Awakening and Empowerment’ Asia Shepsut believes that the work of a priestess was that she “presides at rites concerned with death, birth, sexual union and resuscitation. In a nutshell she constantly strives to bring about union between Heaven – beyond the Underworld – and Earth, which includes the Underworld as a halfway house towards Heaven.”

Their breasts exposed, wearing whilte sheath dresses, the women stand, their hands raised in different gestures from reaching upwards in front of them to on their heads. But its their hair that draws my attention. They all have black ringlets falling in lines that taper at the end.

Some have their heads thrown back looking upwards while others stare ahead of them. This has movement and feeling, with the kohl dripping from their eyes with their tears. One diminutive girl stands naked – a child perhaps?

These mourning rites were part of Egyptian and Sumerian tradition, dating back for thousands of years. These rites were both fertility and land renewal rites, but also deeper mystical knowledge about the healing power of grief work. With the use of prayer, sound, plants, healing, spiritual transference, and maps of the underworld, lamentation festivals helped to heal the population.

In many ways the crucifixion and resurrection are a retelling of the epic funeral rites and rituals enacted every year by the Priestesses of Isis, where they mourned and lamented the living-dying god Osiris. Through the mystery of ritual grief he is resurrected.

I took this photo in the desert of El Kaab inside the Tomb of Paheri, south of Thebes, Egypt. Dating from of the New Kingdom in the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1292 BCE), under the reign of Thutmosis III, Paheri was a nomarch (governor prince) of Nekheb and Anyt and a scribe.

The priestesses of Isis are some of the most famous wailing women. In the annual grief rituals priestesses of Isis re-enacted Isis mourning and searching for her lost husband, Osiris, and finally resurrecting him.

These rituals were renowned for their intensity where priestesses would walk in procession wailing, weeping, singing, and lamenting for the beloved, their tears flowing from the womb of their souls. They would loosen their hair, tear at their clothes, and bang drums and rattle sistrums as they made processions through the streets.

These lamentation rites were also used for Pharaohs or nobility. It was believed that the soul would be trapped in the body after death and had to be coaxed out. To awaken the soul from its entangled slumber in the body so it could journey on, priestesses and mourners would shed tears over the dead body, drag their loose hair across the body, while wailing, weeping, singing, and lamenting grief priestesses and mourners. They were attempting to revive a stuck soul by their tears, and their ability to feel the sorrow of departure into the underworld or otherworld.

Sound familiar?

We can feel these ancient grief rituals in the actions of Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene is described as weeping or lamenting, like a Priestess of Isis.

These rituals sound suspiciously like the unnamed sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair: “A sinful woman in the town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house. So, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, crying. She began to wash his feet with her tears, and she dried them with her hair, kissing them many times and rubbing them with the perfume” (Luke 7:37-38).

The grief rituals of Isis were wild in their expression of grief where priestesses of Isis would walk in procession lamenting and sobbing for the beloved Osiris, their tears, their hair loose, tearing at their clothes, banging drums and rattle sistra.

This photo is also from the  Tomb of Paheri, in El Kaab, south of Thebes, Egypt dating from of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1292 BCE).

Many scholars say that both Jesus and Mother Mary studied in Egypt. But they did not even need to set foot in Egypt to know these lamentation festivals.

Rites of Renewal

This idea of turning back is deeply feminine, also mirrored in the moon and menstruation, the moment when the cycle turns to renew itself, and the love returns, and the light is recovered, and the depth of grief has opened the heart into true compassion. Grief is always a turn back, as our tears fall down to earth (they never rise) and we become part of the cycles of fertility. Cycles complete as new cycles birth.

One of the mystical signatures of the crucifixion and resurrection is the role of grieving and lamentation, a core practice of the feminine mysteries, which were famed for the redemptive and initiatory depth of their grief rituals. Mary Magdalene is famous in tradition for being the woman who repented, whispering to us of these rites of renewal.

It also implies a completed circuit and a “return to origin”, like when the last letter of the god-alphabet unites with the first. The last letter is the Malchut, the Shekinah, the Sophia: wisdom. The mystics would choose to ‘fall’ like the goddess, only with the ascent back to God in mind. It was a pilgrimage of sorts– which later became the journey of Sophia in Gnostic tradition, when innocence becomes wisdom. When God is not something one is born into, but something one chooses, out of love and devotion. It was the highest love. Sophia’s Return.

Artemisia Gentileschi painted Mary Magdalene often, this oil on canvas penitent portrait from around 1615–16, housed in the Palazzo Pitti, Uffizi, Florence. She is practically folded into herself, compressed into her chest, hand propping up her head as if she does not have the strength to hold her head up.

Despite the best efforts to erase Mary Magdalene from the New Testament, she was held such a significant role she could not be removed completely. Mary Magdalene performed a priestess lamentation role repeatedly in the lead up to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Mary Magdalene and the Mary lineage hold secret traditions for grief, loss, keening, otherworld or underworld travel, and resurrection through the power of grieved love. Grief priestesses held the grievers, weeping with them, witnessing their heavy hearts with tenderness and love, and inviting them to join her down in the dark shadowy underworld to release your sorrows and rebirth.

One of the most prominent roles of Mary Magdalene is a grief eater who is one of the Marys who bear witness, grieves, laments. This means Mary Magdalene was performing the role of the Anointrix or Myrrophore, anointing Jesus before his death, and then at the tomb after his death to perform the rites that will help him ascend. She is present for the resurrection of Jesus in his death and resurrection rites. This makes Mary Magdalene a Nephthys figure.

This oil on canvas portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi is ‘Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy’ from around 1623–1625, now in a private collection. What has possessed her? Is she in spiritual or sexual ecstasy? Artemisia Gentileschi leaves it up to us to decide.

We see this in her most celebrated role as his consort/bride anointing him, crumpled at the base of the cross in the depths of her grief, staggering towards the tomb to anoint his corpse one last time and meeting the newly resurrected Jesus as he appears before her.

These vignettes are pervasive in the religion that emerged as Christianity but point to a much older feminine root of mystical practice. This exploration takes us all the way back to the priestesses of the goddess-worshipping traditions known for their rituals of anointing, lamentation, and funerary rites. Priestesses were not constrained by the patriarchal traditions of the time.

Sandro Botticelli created his incredible ‘Lamentation over the Dead Christ’ (1490-92) for the Church of San Paolino, Italy.

First Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus in an ancient kingship ritual, acknowledging him as the Messiah. But at the same time, her act was tinged with sadness, lamenting his imminent death. Finally, Mary Magdalene went to anoint his dead body.

So, let’s break it down so that we can trace the ancient roots of these actions.

Anointing a King

Priestesses performed sensual anointing rituals that gave a man his kingship or they anointed those who were about to die or receive spiritual initiation. The story of Mary Magdalene anointing Jesus is of vital importance as it points towards their partnership as the priestess bride anointing the sacrificial priest-king. This adds them to the other couples throughout the Middle East who performed the same rite: Inanna and Dumuzi, Astarte and Ba’al, Isis and Osiris, Venus and Adonis.

References to an anointing rite of the new king with oil is in the Song of Songs (1:12) with the celebration of the bride and bridegroom. Later, Hebrew male prophets and priests usurped the role of the priestess-queens and took on the right to anoint the kings of Israel.

Mary Magdalene was an Anointrix or Myrrophore – someone trained to us sacred oils for anointings. She uses very expensive spikenard oil to anoint Jesus’ feet and head, wiping it with her hair. Mary also goes to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body before his burial.

What I love about depictions of Mary Magdalene with the jar is the expression on her face. It is as if she’s taunting us, challenging us to lift the lid and look within. Her expression warns that we might not like what we find inside. She says to us “open if you dear” with her eyes.

This portrait by Giampetrino, probably Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, was a north Italian painter of the Lombard school and Leonardo da Vinci’s pupil, active 1520-40. I love how this slight smile suggests she knows more than she’s letting on. She holds her jar of anointing oil, keeping its secrets hidden from the uninitiated and uneducated.

Lamentation

Ancient Egyptian priestesses performed sensual anointing rituals that gave a man his kingship or they anointed those who were about to die or receive spiritual initiation. They presided over grief rituals and funerary rites with weeping and lamentation and were known for their exuberant displays of love and affection and sorrow.

First, we need to acknowledge the living-dying gods of Sumerian and Egyptian grief rituals. Like the Greek Persephone but thousands of years older, Dumuzi (Akkadian Tammuz) was sent to the underworld to substitute Inanna (Akkadian Ishtar) for not grieving her demise.

Dumuzi’s sister, Gestinanna, was so grief-stricken, she offered to take his place, and so Dumuzi was allowed to return to the upperworld half the year and be reunited with Inanna. In Egypt, Osiris was killed by his brother Set and resurrected not once but twice by his sister-wife Isis and their sister Nephthys.

This imsage is the ‘Lamentation’ by Sandro Botticelli.

These Sumerian and Egyptian grief rituals were still taking place in the first century annually, with re-enacted even inside the Jerusalem Temple itself. Ezekiel complains that this ritual lamentation of Tammuz was being practiced at the entrance of the Temple’s northern gate (Ezekiel 8:14).

So, these were living grief rituals that were very known to both Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

But let’s pause a moment.

Our patriarchal society naturally focuses on the men in the rituals – the living-dying gods Dumuzi/Tammuz and Osiris. But what we see in these rituals is that the focus was on the women instead, particularly Inanna and Isis.

These were celebrations of the goddess, of her power over life and death. She had the power to resurrect the male principle. Since ancient times, women were honoured and respected as the Divine Feminine and wielder of the cycles of creation and death and rebirth. Women were celebrated, worshipped as the givers and the takers of life. Women were honoured as the only portal of human life on Earth.

In ceremony and myth around the world, it was winged women and goddesses who brought the medicine of life, death, rebirth and redemption. Nephthys, as guardian of the underworld and earth-womb mysteries, is that her ritual, talismanic magical tool is the anointing vessel or grail.

In ‘The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image’ Leonard Shlain says that “The clearest demonstration of the Goddess’ power was her ability to bring him back to life each spring. Whether she was resurrecting Her consort or regenerating the earth, her adherents stood in awe of her fecundity.”

A dying-and-rising, death-rebirth or resurrection deity is a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies and is resurrected. These festivals had their own texts and were re-enacted out as a mystery play with people (most likely the priestesses and pharaoh) taking parts.

Notice how many women surround Jesus in this portrait by Sandro Botticelli. Even though the women were ignored, they were very present during the last days of Jesus and could not be erased from the story.

Remember what Jesus tells the disciples?

Jesus says, “wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her” (Matthew 26:13). Jesus was asking his disciples remember the woman who anointed him and told whenever the gospel was preached. He wanted her act of love and devotion to be remembered as equally important as the teachings of the gospel.

That is how important this anointing was to Jesus.

Feeling it All

Mary Magdalene so much more. She leaned in, encouraging me to feel it all – the good, bad and the ugly. She kept nodding and smiling, inviting me to feel it all, even the pain. She felt very tantric, inviting in the full spectrum of consciousness.

Lucky for me, I had been consciously practicing Shakti Tantra since 2017, after being called to India by Kali Ma. One of the core tenets of Tantra is to embrace all and reject nothing. Because it’s all life, the parts we love and the parts we detest, the parts that scare the crap out of us. Tantra is an embodied spirituality. No experience was excluded from the mundane to the blissful.

Tantra is an exploration of the spectrum of consciousness. No human experience was excluded. It included everything from the mundane to the blissful. Tantra created maps to help others navigate through this world. Tantra is an embodied spirituality. It includes sexuality. Nothing is excluded. So, this makes it different from all other religions.

The word Shakti means power. Shakti is the divine feminine power. Shakti is the innate power in reality.

Mary Magdalene calls us into the dark corners of ourselves, to all the denied, rejected, and ignored parts of our psyche. These are the parts of us we were taught to fear. At first, we might recoil because we were conditioned to be terrified of our own inner power. We have cast light on the dark exiled pieces of ourselves hiding deep in the shadows of our own minds.

She waits patiently to be fully seen and brought into the light of remembrance once more. Because when we are brave enough to face ourselves. We find she is not monstrous but magnificent. She is our instinct, our intuition, our embodied wisdom.

It is often tricky to access the depth of feeling through art, but many artists used Mary Magdalene to show their incredible skill, including this seventeenth century oil on canvas portrait by Giacinto Brandi (1621-1691), Italy. She holds an unassuming little jar, one of Mary Magdalene’s many symbols.

Christian Lamentation Rituals

There are many crucial ways that death and grief rites embedded into Christianity, but without the correct context or the deeper mystical layers of psycho-spiritual and somatic initiation that create ‘shamans’ of true living resurrection.

The grief ritual with the role of the feminine (goddess) in resurrecting the male (god) was taken up in medieval times, where Magdalene’s grief was mystically enacted. St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) wrote an emotional prayer-poem about Magdalene and Christ for Adelaide, the younger daughter of William the Conqueror.

“Saint Mary Magdalen, you who came with a fount of tears to Christ. How should I tell of you, burning with love of him, wept for him at seeking at his tomb, and sought him whilst weeping? How kindly, and in what friendly way, he inflamed you, whom he came to console … O wonderful devotion! … She was not able to prevent them from killing you; and she wished to preserve your body with unguents for a long time.”

In some medieval depictions Mary Magdalene is pictured at the base of the cross at Golgotha, wearing a red cloak (symbolic of the female witch-shaman and womb priestess), catching Christ’s blood in a skull and bones, with her hair long and loose, entwined round his feet, alluding to the anointing. Her cloak is described as blazing with the “fire of love” as she embodies deep feminine sorrow, and the weeping lover, becoming a symbolic Isis.

In the mystery plays of medieval times, the Easter death and resurrection were a key theme. They presented the three Marys, Magdalene, Salome, and Jacoby, bearing anointing jars, known as alabastrons, walking in procession to the sepulchre. When they arrive at the empty tomb, Magdalene takes centre stage with her lamentations.

In the Tours manuscript, Magdalene faints in grief, “Then Mary Jacoby comes who takes her right arm and Mary Salome takes her left, and they lift her from the ground, saying to her, ‘Dear sister, there is too much sorrow in your soul.’”

Here Eugène Delacroix depicts Saint Mary Magdalene at the Foot of the Cross in around 1829.

In Magdalene Mysteries: The Left-Hand Path of the Feminine Christ’ Seren and Azra Bertrand describe the iconography of Mary Magdalene: “The picture of Magdalene that emerges is vivid and compelling, with her scarlet hair, green eyes, alabaster or ebony skin, and rich wine-red hooded cloak. This is a woman who has become a ‘low priestess’ — who is on her knees, weeping with the world, yet infused with the rich, abundant fertility of the soil; she can be ecstatic and enraptured with love, the one who loves “too much,” or she can be found walking amongst the fallen and forgotten, in the taverns and inns of ill repute, suffering alongside the wounded, sobbing and lamenting for the losses of humanity.”

In some accounts, Mary Magdalene acts as grief doula of sorts to Mary. In a thirteenth-century Italian hymn the Virgin Mary sings to Magdalene: “Help me Magdalene; grief overwhelms me”.

Emulating the goddess, medieval mystics would choose to descend to ascend. It was a pilgrimage, a journey of consciousness from the dark back into the light. Mystics understood that we must first embrace our shape, make peace with the denied, rejected, or ignored parts of ourselves before we can ascend fully as a fully realised human, Anthropos.

Here El-Greco depicts the Penitent Magdalene in around 1590. She stares at the cross but gestures towards the skull, cast in so much shadow its easy to miss. (For more on the symbolism of the skull see my blog: ‘Mary Magdalene, the Mystic’).

In the Gnostic Christian tradition, this is the journey of Sophia, where innocence becomes wisdom. They understood god is not something we are born into, but something we choose to express in love and devotion. It was the highest love with Sophia’s Return.

Facing Our Fear

Fear and resistance to fully feel pain and suffering is not a superpower. Fear is what holds us back from fully loving and living life. But the root of all fear is the fear of death, and resistance to what is. Because we all die.

Our fear and our resistance is a gateway, a portal to being a fully realised human, anthropos. We can’t become en-lightened by denying, ignoring, and rejecting our mortality. By embracing all levels, layers, and dimensions of ourselves we become more authentic, and comfortable to express the truth of who we are.

Our fear is a signal to pause and feel into. If we can give it space to contract and compress, we feel it fully, it will naturally dissolve and expand once more. This is what the ancient grief rituals allows their people to do.

Howl. Vent. Wail. Weep. Beat their chest and pull at their hair. Give voice to the pain they felt. Give movement. Feel their suffering, feel their inconsolable emptiness. Share that age-old question “Why me?” with thousands of others all feeling the same. When we think “Life’s not fair!” we look around us and see that yes, loss a natural normal part of life. Share the grief of insurmountable loss. No longer feel so alone. This is what I feel these grief rituals did.

And afterwards the inner sadness would be swept clean. No more tears I shed. Scoured clean. Raw. A new beginning. Ready to greet a new day. The burden of sadness lightened.

This is sacred work.

It is not easy to do alone. Life was never meant to be a solitary ritual. It was meant to be done together, in community. We need people that support us when we enter the darkness instead of always turning towards the light. We need to feel safe and supported so that our nervous system is not activated, and we can relax into the process of descent.

Feature image: ‘The Mourning Mary Magdalene’ c.1500 Museum of Fine Arts Budapest