A Pet's View / October 2006
Ritual Healing
Tragedy and trauma are sometimes inescapable. Large scale disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes leave massive suffering in their wake, but small, personal disasters can also cause the pain of loss and grief. Divorce, death of a parent, friends who move away friends, the loss of a pet–there are many occasions through the course of a lifetime when an individual must handle the pain of loss and grief.
Though loss and bereavement are part of the ongoing cycle of life, Sydney Barbara Metrick, a pet bereavement counselor and co-author of Crossing the Bridge: Creating and Performing Ceremonies for Growth and Change, says they do not have to result in helplessness. “While loss is inevitable. and the pain it causes is compounded by lack of tools for processing difficult feelings, it is possible to use ritual and creative expression to transform the feelings and experience healing,”
She suggests creative expression as a powerful tool for healing. “Creating a ceremony or a ritual is a way to bring honor and support to any type of passage. There are so many kinds of loss that deeply effect people, yet many of the losses are ignored or avoided.”
The loss of a beloved pet is a common, especially painful loss, that people often do no not formally recognize. But, Metrick says, “When something that was part of you in an important way leaves, you are cheating yourself if you don’t process the transition. Each of these losses means you are leaving behind something that contributed to your sense of identity. Ignoring a loss does not mean you will avoid being marked by it.”
She says that making art or creating a ceremony can help with grieving and healing. “Making art is about taking an inner experience, a thought or feeling and translating it. When you can take what is within and bring it out, you are separating from it in a way that gives you some objectivity as well as some distance. A ceremony or ritual provides a way of creatively honoring and processing feelings.” The ceremony can be something as simple as making a scrapbook or writing a poem. A healing ritual might just be lighting a candle in honor of the pets life or visiting the grave and saying a prayer.
Metrick says, “Doing nothing feeds helplessness. Doing something is movement and has an accompanying feeling of accomplishment. Loss is often painful. People are generally uncomfortable and awkward around painful situations. I think there is the hope that things will just get better on their own.” Creating art and ceremonies to say good bye may not make the loss any easier, but they can make the experience more meaningful and help with healing.
Copyright © 2005-2006 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
Top • Home • Subscribe • Advertise • Submit • Distribution • Contact
Support Our Advertisers • Organization Resources • Women Owned Business
Designed by Livewire Studio
Send an Email About This Article