Module Six
Module Six
Reading and Reflections
Read from your chosen book, underline and make notes as you read. Perhaps underlining sentences that 1) resonate deeply with you, 2) offer a new concept or idea, or 3) you do not agree with entirely. Make notes in the margins or journal for our discussion. Your reflections and notations will be part of the continuing conversation of your experience of transformation through loss.
Journaling
Continue to journal about anything that shows up for you that feels significant. Notice the patterns of your life or the emerging patterns, and make notes about these and anything else that feels emotionally important. How does it feel to intentionally value your losses? How does it feel to offer self-compassion and self-care? What feels different today? What do you see in a new way? What is surprising to you?
Ritual Action: Bones of the Ceremony
When you come into your space to do your work for the module, begin or open the space in a particular way that acknowledges your support and intentions. Offer yourself compassion; acknowledge the depth of the losses you have experienced. Value those losses, both in their pain and learnings.
Prepare the Bones of Ceremony: This week, you will be preparing for our last session for this layer of grief work. You may already have in mind a ceremony you would like to bring to our last session. If it supports your preparation, please use this outline of the Bones of Ceremony to help you prepare.
Some other ritual actions to consider:
Letter/Poem/Story: Using your notes and reflections from your relationship graph and your object as ritual to craft a letter, poem, story to the person that represents the loss you have been experiencing. Include the statements of gratitude, forgiveness, apology, and significant emotions. Write this letter/poem/story to the person (however, you WILL NOT give this letter to the person). Instead, together, you will read this letter/poem/story at the ceremony in our last session. Reading and having it witnessed is a ritual action to release pain you have been carrying, so that you will have more space and healing.
Write your personal mythology. Consider the shore you left to swim through the deep waters to discover your own gems. See where you stand now, the new ground. Revisit the key wisdom statements from your initiatory event, as well as the vivid images, symbols, and patterns. In contrast to the linear story you may have told about yourself in the past, create a mythology of who you are now. This story is whole with movement and fluidity, and paradox and resources. This tale tells the whole truth. It is a story that will carry you forward through images and knowing that live in your body.
Object as Ritual: At our next meeting, we will hold this ceremony honoring your rite of passage through this layer of intense grief and loss. This letter/poem/story will be part of the ceremony. You may also want to bring the object or objects you have worked with to cultivate deep self-care and expansion of resources through the integration process.
Self-care: Engage one of the self-care practices suggested, or create one of your own to do daily.
