I have taught about grief.

I have sat with grief.

I have studied traditions that understand grief very differently than we do in the West.

And now I am living inside it.

Since my son transitioned, I have begun to understand something in an entirely different way:

Grief needs somewhere to go.

In much of the Western culture, we have become remarkably uncomfortable with grief.

We hold service.

We send flowers.

We offer condolences.

We give someone a few days away from work.

And then, almost imperceptibly, the world begins asking them to return.

Return the phone calls.

Return to work.

Return to normal.

Return to being productive.

Return to being okay.

But where exactly is all that grief supposed to go?

The Dagara grief teachings I received through Malidoma Somé offered me another understanding.

Grief is not something to be privately managed behind closed doors.

Grief is communal.

It needs witnesses.

It needs sound.

It needs tears.

It needs movement.

it needs the Earth.

It needs ritual.

It needs somewhere for everything that can no longer remain inside the body to be expressed.

There is wisdom in creating a container where someone does not have to make their grief smaller so everyone else can feel more comfortable.

Because perhaps it is not grief itself that creates so much of our suffering.

Perhaps some of the unnecessary suffering comes from having nowhere for our grief to go.

From swallowing the wail.

From apologizing for the tears.

From changing the subject because death makes someone uncomfortable.

From being asked, "Are you doing better?" when there is no "better" to return to.

My son died 14 days ago.

I am not interested in getting over him.

I am learning how to carry my relationship with him differently.

And I am realizing that I need ritual now--not as something I facilitate for someone else, but as a mother whose body is carrying something too enormous to contain alone.

So I am creating a Grief Ritual.

A place for the tears that arrive without warning.

A place for anger.

A place for love with nowhere physical to land.

A place to speak his name.

A place to remember.

A place to wail if I need to wail.

A place to be silent if silence comes instead.

A place where grief does not need to be fixed, explained, spiritualized or hurried.

Because grief is not the absence of love.

Grief is love learning how to exist in a different form.

Maybe we don't need to become better at escaping grief.

Maybe we need to become better at ritualizing it.

Together.

Witnessed.

Held.

Allowed.

For tonight, I will speak his name.

Jonathan Franklin Nemanic.

My beautiful boy.

Hail, Jonny. 

The river continues.

The ripple continues.

And so does your Saga.