Weaving the Old Ways: Bringing Grief Back Into Our Culture for a Sustainable Future

Weaving Grief
20 minutes ago
6 min read

We have forgotten.

In our modern world, progress is often measured by speed, consuption, growth, and productivity. And somewhere along the way, we have lost touch with something essential, something real, raw, and primal. We have forgotten how to grieve and mourn together. We forgot the ancestral rhythms that once held us in times of loss and transition. We have forgotten the rituals that tethered us to land, spirit, community, and each other.

And this is an invitation to remember.

We have been stripped of our cultural frameworks that allow humans to metabolize grief as a collective exprience. Instead of gathering around fires, rivers, and alters, we now grieve in private, often in silence, hidden away from others, unsure how to carry the weight of sorrow, the pain in our hearts, and the division between us.

Yet, beneath the surface, there is a knowing that many of us feel, a call to remember the old ways. Ever since I met the depths of grief, I have been on a journey to understand and weave the wisdom of grief back into the frame. The wisdom of our ancestors reminds us that grief is sacred, and meant to be woven into the fabric of our beings, and to be held amongst one another.

Weaving the Old Ways of Grief Tending

Our ancestors lived in rhythm with the land. They knew the cycles of planting and harvesting, the power of wild plants, and the sacredness of food shared in community. Healing was not outsourced to quick fixes, it was cultivated through relationship with the earth and within community.

Grief was also nourished through these practices, teas sipped, meals cooked and shared, stories of love and loss shared over meals. Food and medicine were emotional and spiritual offerings that helped indiviudals and communities metabolize loss.

Reclaiming ancestral food and medicine practcies today, through gardening, foraging, herbal remedies, reminds us that healing is slow, relational, and cyclical. And this is what our grief asks of us too.

Rhythms and Rituals

Every culture once carried rituals for grief that looked, felt, and sound so different from the way we santize and tuck away our grief and sorrow now.

Wailing, keening, wearing black, dancing, drumming, building shrines and alters, sitting vigil, these acts gave space and shape to sorrow. They reminded us that grief is not a probelm to solve or get rid of, but a sacred experience to hold, to honour, to welcome, and to be with.

Life was woven with seasonal rhythms that that taught us about life and death, planting and harvest, light and dark. These cycles mirrored the inner seasons of the soul. When grief arrived, we knew what to do with it, there were rituals to mark its presence, to remind indiviudals that they are not alone, and to guide them back toward life when the time was right.

Reintroducing rituals into our modern lives is about creating new expressions. You may chose to light a candle, sing a song, hold a grief circle, or weave something new that honours both tradition and present needs. By reclaiming ritual, we begin to welcome grief rather than run from it.

Community as Survival

Survival used to depend on the strength and skills of community, we needed each other (and we still do, we just don't always act like it). Labour was shared, resources pooled, children raised together and nurtured by many supporting adults, and grief was carried collectively. When someone died, the whole village mourned, together. Loss was not privatized as it is now, it belonged to everyone.

Grief shared is grief healed.

Today, many feel isolated, misunderstood, and silenced in their grief. Without structures to help us hold our losses, indviudals are left to bear the unbearable weight alone, and grief was never meant to be carried alone. Its meant to be held, in care, and in community. The isolation we feel with out pain compounds suffering.

The wisdom here is clear, we are not meant to grieve alone. To create a sustainable and soulful future, we are invited to return to communal ways of being, as my mentor Francis Weller calls it, the village mind. We must sit with our grief in circle, in community ritual, and share stories. These are survival strategies that stregthen the fabric of our collective life.

What We Can Learn Today

How do we bring this wisdom forward?

Rituals for Grief. Communal or personal, we can begin to ritualize our sorrow and hold space for our grief with reverence and care. Maybe you choose to build an alter, or shrine, honour days of remembering, or turn towards others, maybe you decide to lead the way and rebuild a space for people to come and mourn together.
Food as Connection and Medicine. Cook and share meals, talk and share stories over food, weave in seasonal elements and nourishment. Bring back food as medicine.
Bring Back the Old Ways. Learn a new skill or practice, maybe for you its gardening, foraging, medicine making, or holding space for ritual. These are ways of tending to the loss of culture itself, and we need this.
Collective Spaces. Build communities (online AND offline), where grief is welcomed, witnessed, and held with care. That is the heart and soul of Weaving Grief, and we are so glad you are here. We also invite you to explore ways you may want to weave community in your local area as well.

These practices remind us that grief is not seperate from the rest of our human experience, it is deeply entangled. To build forward in a meaningful way, we must learn to grieve the losses of the present, the erosion of community, collective divide, and all the sorrow of the world. Grief is the guide that allows us to move into depth, connection, compassion, and presence with what is and what remains.

The Soul of Grief

Grief guides us into deeper relationship to nature, to the land, to people, to ritual, and to mystery. Our ancestors understood that grief was part of this relationship, a thread binding the living and the dead, the past and the future, the seen and unseen.

Grief, when welcomed, becomes a deep well of wisdom that we draw from and connect to. It deepends our revernece for life, sharpens our awareness of what really matters, and fuels our committment to protect what is fragile and sacred. Without grief, sustainabilty risks becoming a technical project. With grief, it becomes a soulful, relational act of love.

Walking Forward, and Looking Back

To create the sustainable future we long to see and be apart of, we must remember what we've long forgotten: that grief belongs. By weaving grief wisdom and practices back into our collective culture, we restore what has been fractured and fragmented. We reconnect to food, medicine, ritual, and community. We reclaim the village mind, ancestral practices, and ways of being, which are rooted in interconnection, reverence, and care.

The path forward is not about rejecting the modern world, but about reweaving the threads of the old into the fabric of the new. In doing so, we honour our ancestors, tend our grief, and lay foundations for a future sustained not only by resources, but also by love.

About Us:

Weaving Grief specializes in compassionate grief therapy for individuals navigating loss of any kind - death, breakups, relationship transitions, chronic illness, loss of self, and more. By addressing these profound experiences, Weaving Grief empowers clients to grieve freely and live fully. Through somatic practices and meaningful reflection, we’re here to help you navigate these tender moments and rediscover the fullness of life.

Specific areas of focus: death of a loved one (recent or past), life changing transitions, relationship transitions and break ups, pregnancy loss, grief around family planning, chronic illness, loss of Self, and supporting entrepreneurs through the grief that comes with growth.

To learn more about Our Team or to book a session, click here.

In this blog post: Explore how ancestral wisdom, grief rituals, and traditional practices can guide us toward a more sustainable future. Learn how weaving grief back into our culture restores connection, resilience, and balance.