Fellow therapist Mary Ellen Owen joins me today to share her journey with sorrow. Like many people with trauma, it took Mary Ellen years to find her tears, years to befriend her sorrow. Although she cognitively knew that grief was necessary for healing, something within her said “hell no” to feeling the unfelt sorrow. In this final episode in a series on grief and sorrow, Mary Ellen shares how she came to befriend her sorrow. In the words of Fredrick Buechner, “Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but, more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.”

I am joined today by Heather Stringer, who has lots of experience creating rituals that heal. Heather begins by describing two rituals: one focused on recovering from sexual assault and the second focused on preparing for a double mastectomy surgery. Heather and I talk about why ritual is so unfamiliar to many of us, and the healing that occurs when we begin to move our bodies in particular ways, especially when others are present to bear witness to the ritual. 

I am joined by Cathy Loerzel to talk about how to engage another person’s story. Effective story engagement is not a magical skill that some people have and some people don’t. It can be learned. Today we give a preview of some of the principles and tactics of effective story engagement. If you want to learn more, consider joining us on Saturday, May 13, for a zoom conference on How to Engage Another Person’s Story. You can sign up here.

Jay Stringer joins me to talk about the relationship between our current sexual difficulties and our story in our family of origin. Sexual struggles are rooted in our stories—and, very often, our stories of attachment to our primary caretakers. As Jay puts it, “When it comes to sexual struggles, there are always two story lines at play: there is the story line of your present sexual struggles, and then there is the story line of your growing up experiences which set you up for those present sexual struggles.” If you want to explore your sexual story in more depth, please sign up for the Sexual Attachment Conference on May 5-6. You can sign up here. 

In order to heal from sorrow, we need to move our bodies as we participate in rituals of honoring and releasing our sorrow. A ritual is a sequence of bodily movements and symbolic actions performed with emotion and intention for the purpose of healing and transformation. By the end of this episode, I hope you have a good understanding of what a ritual is and why rituals work. And I hope you begin to develop an imagination for how to do rituals, what it actually might look like for you. You can perform a ritual by yourself. However, rituals are more powerful—and more healing for the community—when others are involved as witnesses to your pain.