The Medicine of Grief: A Sacred Ceremony for Women
Under our anger…is our grief.
Under our confusion…is our grief.
Under our numbness…is our grief.
Under our judgment…is our grief.
Under our loneliness…is our grief.
Under our fear…is our grief.
~ Seren Bertrand, Womb Awakening
There I was, riding my bicycle on the Provincelands trail on my last morning of pilgrimage to the sea. A bicycle ride I was apprehensive about the reviews mentioned steep climbs and "not for beginners." I had waited four days to take this ride, a trip to reclaim my body's capability for movement and joy. Having gone 34 miles on the bike in previous days, getting lost on coastal roads, allowing the sea breeze and salted winds to scrub and polish the sand within my heart.
It was twelve months since my partner and I uncoupled a year of hermitting, creating new rituals, and finding the joy and sacred pleasures in the mundane. These are pleasures that no one else may ever see, so they become a secret and special covenant between me and the Divine. I had taken this journey the year before to the same place and was initiated by the sea in my deep sorrow, anger, and pain. The seal, my guide, preparing me for another year of shedding that can only be done in the sacred confines of heart and home.
One year later, here I was cycling strenuously up the Provinceland hills and there is no shame in hopping off the bike and walking it up when there are no spoons left in my core and legs to go. I found myself celebrating each crest as I descended with an outpouring wail and glorious "weeeeeeeeeeeeeee". The child in me returned as the innocent wanderer and curious explorer, even as adult me began to feel pressure, an emergence.
And then it happened.
I came to a crest and saw what had been calling me all along the sea. I saw this sea from my own eyes, but what I felt within was the emerging surge of grief: the loss of my father while he was living and in his death 18 years ago, the loss of the healed masculine in my lineage, the sea that my grandfather was forced to traverse from Sicily to America nearly a century ago to avoid being forced into a life of crime and cruelty. I felt the women who were raised without voices and taught their children subconsciously to do the same, to stay quiet.
Provincelands Trail, Provincetown, MA 2025
It all emerged in this moment.
And then something softened, something opened within me. I began to feel that harsh grit sandpaper on my heart reveal a pearl, soft, luminescent, and in closeness with the Divine. The tears turned from sorrow to liberation, the emerging release of some part of myself freed from captivity. Trusting this nudge to rent a bicycle and move had been the very medicine I needed to release this lock.
I continued my journey to the sea, the womb of the mother I returned to. The seals greeted me as if to welcome me back home, playing, flipping, twirling with the waves. Showing me that when I finally released fighting the waves, I would not drown in my sorrow but become one with the cycles, the spinning and twirling of life, of water. That I could play once I let go.
The Seal Woman
There was one more messenger on this journey. I had pulled my bicycle over to rest on my way back to the parking lot when a fox, a big, bright red, happily gallivanting fox—walked within two feet of me carrying its breakfast (something yummy with a long tail) in its mouth. The symbology of swiftness, keenness, sharp vision, trust, and the decay of the dead it carried. Having spent the better part of the last year releasing relationships, habits, beliefs about self and other, what it truly means to have a business following a soul purpose, and being stripped bare knowing that this is my highest good and highest healing. I knew this cycle was near completion and that a new life was ready to birth through me.
Why We Need Sacred Containers for Women's Grief
So often I meet women apologizing for their tears, holding back their rage that barricades their sorrow, and quieting the tides of water as they surge to pour forth from heart and lungs. But we don't need to do this anymore.
For the wellbeing of our spirits, our bodies, our selves, families, and communities, it is essential that we bring back healthy and sacred ceremonies and rituals to hold our grief in its transformational gifts.
What Happens When We Repress Grief
When we push down our grief, we don't eliminate it, we imprison it. Unexpressed grief becomes:
In Our Bodies:
Chronic tension, pain, illness, autoimmune conditions, reproductive issues, digestive problems, exhaustion that no amount of rest can heal
In Our Psyches:
Depression, anxiety, numbness, dissociation, rage turned inward, the loss of our capacity to feel joy, to be present, to truly love
In Our Relationships:
Unconscious patterns passed down through generations, walls around our hearts that keep out love along with pain, the inability to be vulnerable and authentic
In Our Lineages:
Ancestral wounds that echo through bloodlines, the silencing of women's voices generation after generation, unmetabolized trauma that our children inherit in their nervous systems
The womb is a portal of life and love. The womb is also a gate of loss and death. Everything we love, we must also grieve. Everything we desire will cost us grief. This is not a curse—this is what makes us fully human, fully alive.
The Transformational Power of Witnessed Grief
When we grieve in community, held in sacred container, something extraordinary happens:
Personal Healing:
Our tears become prayer. Our bodies release what they've been carrying. We reclaim parts of ourselves we thought were lost forever. We discover that our grief knows exactly where to go when we finally allow it to move.
Family Healing:
We break cycles of silence and suppression. We model for our children that all feelings are holy. We stop unconsciously passing down unmetabolized pain. We become the ancestors our descendants will thank.
Lineage Healing:
We grieve not just our own losses but the losses of the women who came before us—the ones who had no permission, no container, no witness. We offer them the tears they couldn't cry. We speak the words they couldn't speak. We free them, and in freeing them, we free ourselves.
Community Healing:
We remember we are not meant to grieve alone. We discover that our individual losses connect us to something universal. We witness each other's wholeness even in brokenness. We create new culture, one tear at a time.
An Invitation to the Womb Grief Ceremony
We Will Journey Through:
Welcoming Grief : Creating sacred space to honor all that we carry in our wombs, our hearts, our bodies, our lineages
Embodied Movement: Allowing grief to move through us, teaching us, cleansing us, restoring flow to what has been frozen
Womb Wisdom Teaching: Understanding grief as medicine, as portal, as the birthplace of transformation
Fire Release Ceremony: Releasing and letting go of what no longer serves us, our families, our bloodlines
Opening to Receive: Discovering how grieving creates capacity for what wants to be born through us
This Ceremony Is For You If:
You carry grief for losses great or small, recent or ancient
You hold tears you've never had permission to cry
You feel the weight of your mother's grief, your grandmother's grief, your great-grandmother's grief
You've experienced miscarriage, infertility, abortion, difficult births, or womb trauma
You grieve relationships that ended, dreams that died, versions of yourself you had to release
You're ready to stop apologizing for your tears
You're ready to reclaim your voice, your rage, your power
You're in a time of transition, be it a career or job change, relationship shift (ending of relationship or change: aging parents, children leaving home
You have experienced the death of a loved one
You simply wish to be held in whatever is present for you to grieve
Details:
Date: November 29, 2025
Time: 3:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Rising Earth Healing Arts, Wappingers Falls
Investment: $88
Limited to12 women to ensure intimate, held space
What to Bring: Comfortable clothing you can move in, journal if desired (all other materials provided)
Register: https://square.link/u/32VQoQwz
When I release fighting the waves, I do not drown in my sorrow. I become one with the cycles, the spinning and twirling of life. I learn that I could play once I let go.
Everything we love, we must also grieve.
And in grieving together, we remember how to truly live.
In Rooted Love,
Christine Jude Winus
Rising Earth Healing Arts
A Sanctuary for Healing & Transformation
Wappingers Falls, NY
"The cure for the pain is in the pain." ~Rumi
