Collective Grief Rituals For A Busy World

Grief doesn’t come with an action plan. It shows up, it changes the air in the room, and it refuses to be “solved” by working harder or thinking differently. Today we sit with what happens when death and loss break into ordinary life, and why grief can feel like love with nowhere to go. We also talk about the quiet social rule so many of us learned: apologise for your sadness so nobody else has to feel it.

We zoom out to collective grief and the cultural habits that make it harder to mourn together. When bereavement leave is brief and productivity is treated like virtue, grief becomes something you’re expected to manage in private and on a deadline. Even mental health frameworks can send mixed messages when grief gets squeezed into timelines, labels, or “acceptable” durations. As licensed mental health professionals, we ask what gets lost when the collective cannot make room for mourning.

Then we get practical about community care and grief rituals. We share concrete ways to support a grieving person without putting the burden on them to direct you, and we explore the idea of anchors: grounding practices, relationships, spirituality, nature, and meaning-making that help you hold on when emotions feel like a rushing river. We close with the practice of continuation, remembering the people we love and letting both joy and sorrow coexist in daily life.

If this conversation gives you language for your own loss, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review. What’s one grief ritual or anchor you want your community to normalise?

Notes: we referenced the work of Jamila Reddy, https://jamilareddy.me/

Newsletter: https://jamilareddy.substack.com/p/your-grief-is-not-a-problem-to-solve?utm_source=substack&publication_id=2025474&post_id=184494531&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&isFreemail=true&r=5nx3cs&triedRedirect=true

Thanks for listening, 

Tolu & Gitika 

You can reach us at kinnected.squarespace.com

Tolu is the Founder of Re-member Counseling & Gitika is the Founder of Pranh Healing & Wellness 

Transcript

Welcome And March Check-In

Tolu 0:19

Okay, we're recording. Welcome to Connected, the podcast centers Collective Care and Relationships That Outlast Empire. We're your hosts. I'm Tolu.

Gitika 0:32

And I'm GitHub.

Tolu 0:33

Yeah, two licensed mental health professionals in the so-called United States. So how are you arriving? How are you doing today? Last Monday of the month in March. What a relief.

Gitika 0:49

Yeah.

Tolu 0:50

Okay, what a relief.

Gitika 0:51

Yes, I think time has been flying faster than I expect, as always. So I'm always glad when time has passed. So I'm glad March is done. And now we are on to April. And I'm hopeful that April will be less busy month. But overall, I think I'm well. I'm arriving well this morning.

Tolu 1:17

Yeah. What about you, Tolu? I'm like, wow, March is over. That was a long month, but it wasn't at the same time. Like, I'm like, no, yeah, March is gone. Crazy. Excited for spring. Also, too. I've been just feeling more. I'm just worried. I don't have my feelings too anymore. A little bit more mindful. I had some former colleagues pass away this week. So I've been more like meditative, mindful about just life and just how fleeting it can be. So that's kind of been sitting with me lately. Yeah, so it's been an okay week. Also, too, on the flip side of that, I've been able to hang out with friends, family. It's not calling time with people that I really care about, meet new people too. So that's been really nice and generative as well.

Grief Has No Action Button

Gitika 2:07

Yeah. Now you've been spending time with folks, and it sounds like there were also some losses earlier this week.

Tolu 2:16

Yeah. Unexpected losses. And that kind of leads me into our topic today. I've been thinking about greed. Collective greed. Right. Grie is one of the more difficult emotions to be with. I heard somebody say recently, grief is the only emotion that doesn't have action. Right? There's nothing. It's there. It's just it's there, right? Yeah, what do you think about that that comment, that statement?

Gitika 2:53

Yeah, I think that there's no way to unchange. I mean, like when I think about how grief is a reaction to something that has changed. But also when I think about that comment that she grief is the only emotion that has no action, I realize, oh yeah, so many of our emotions are about taking an action so that the cause of the emotion can change. But when grief is caused by something that has changed and it's not on your hands to unchange it, your only option is to keep moving forward with the reality that something has shifted. But I'm also thinking about grief rituals. But those are different. They seem to be a way to bear grief. And suddenly it doesn't feel okay that somebody died. There is no way to start feeling okay about that. Well, it's more of moving forward despite somebody dying, for example. Yeah. What's it like for you though, when you think about that comment? What do you think?

Tolu 4:07

I think it's an invitation to bear witness, right? There's a bearing witness, like grief has come to visit you. And if you can't outrun your grief, grief is always gonna be there. You either choose to not open the door to it, or you open the door to it, right? As a visitor. Right? Grief has come to be with you, you to like do something about it. It's so it feels like an invitation to witness something that used to be filled, that no longer is filled anymore. So it's like a bearing witness to a part of you that or a relationship you no longer have access to. I've also heard to like grief is where love has nowhere to go, right? Maybe there was that love that was to that relationship or to that person now that that person is no longer here with us in the physical realm. It's kind of like, what do I do with this energy now that I have? Because I can't, I don't have anybody to share it with or give it to. So I've heard that described as like grief as well, a way of being with griefs.

Gitika 5:11

Yeah, wow. Yeah. I'm also thinking about traditions, spiritual traditions that invite us to recognize that you are not this body. This body is like clothes you wear, this body is here to hold you and take you through this world, but you are bigger than this body, and how grief is at the heart of it coming from feeling connected to someone in their body, but when they leave their body, you find new ways to connect with them. Yeah, your relationship takes on another form as well. So I'm thinking about the love that we have for people and how that is often expressed in this way, right? Like you hug, you send gifts, you talk.

Tolu 6:07

Right.

Gitika 6:08

And finding ways to build a relationship that is outside those forms. That seems to be the challenge. Yeah.

Collective Grief And Apologizing

Tolu 6:22

It's very disruptive. Death is very disruptive. Even if it's anticipated, it's still disruptive. Yeah. Very disruptive. Also, too, it's a part of the cycle of our existence. The seasons fall as a form of death and dying, right? Yeah. And then there's that hibernation, and then there's that life again, the cyclical pattern of it. But when I so I think about the how nature deals with death and how it commutes with death, right? It's something that's a part of the cycle of the seasons. And then as well, too, I'm curious about collective grief, right? What does it look like to collectively grieve? Right? What are the what are the difficult parts about inviting that into the collective? What are the beneficial parts about inviting that to the collectives? I think grief is a lot to teach us and to show us about ourselves and about the collective. So I'm curious about that for you. Like when we talk about collective griefs, like what comes up for you.

Gitika 7:32

I'm thinking about how there's so much sadness, right? When we're grieving, it's uh it's such a heavy emotion and it it really pulls you down. Like even recently, a friend of mine was chatting with me, and we were exchanging audio notes because that's one way I keep in touch with friends when you're in different time zones and everything. Instead of trying to find one time to meet, you exchange audio notes, and we were exchanging audio notes, and she happened to include the fact that somebody she knew was in a state of actively dying, and she just asked for us to keep him in our prayers, and as he's transitioning from elder to ancestor, and then she ended the note with the audio note with, I'm sorry to bring us down like this as I'm closing. And I remember thinking about it later, that the grief is also something that we sometimes apologize for. As a connect, do we find it hard to grieve together because we think we are going to bring each other down? I think we are already down. If we have something to grieve collectively, it's whether we are acknowledging, and like you said, I are we allowing the grief in? Are we allowing the grief into our conversation, into our connection? Or do we keep thinking, oh, this is too heavy? Let's not talk about this. So where does all of that go? Right. Maybe we don't have to talk about it all the time, but when can we talk about it? We've decided when we won't talk about it. Have we decided when we will? And I think that's that's where like they wonder about collective grief rituals. Yeah. Can we schedule that since we are so by the clock and calendar in vested civilization anyway?

Tolu 9:37

Right. Only only three days off for grief, right? I think we have what is that title caught off?

Gitika 9:43

Bereavement league.

Tolu 9:44

Bereavement. Three days. You only get three days, and you gotta come back to work.

Systems That Squeeze Grief

Gitika 9:49

For sure. So you decide which person in your life is worthy of those three days. And please don't have too many people you care for because you have only three days.

Community Care And Concrete Help

Tolu 10:01

Yeah. And I think what gets in the way of us being able to graze in the collective is like capitalism, right? These systems in which you live in. Or even we even pathologize grief, right? In the DSM, I think it's like prolonged grief disorder, right? You decide for too long. Yeah, six months in you and you're still upset about your mom passing away. What's going on? We need CPT code for that. ALZ code for that, whatever, right? So the even the culture in which we live in discourages like grieving, right? Grieving beyond acceptable, acceptable amount of time. And of course, that's gonna discourage the individual from being with it. So it's like, I gotta go back to work, I gotta pay my bills, I have to feed these kids, I have to google my head. And I think that's why it's so important to have community when you're grieving so they can bear those parts that feel unbearable at times, right? Cooking for yourself, yeah. Whatever things you have to do, chores, right? Kind of like how we have meal trains when like children are born, right? I wonder if we can apply that same principle to when somebody passes away. What do you need? How can I show for you? How can I support in this transition? The those were transitioned. Life is a transition, death is a transition, right? Right. So, can we create more rituals, right? Around how do we support those who are in transition of losing a loved one, losing something of significance to them? Make that creating space for that.

Gitika 11:41

Yeah. I'm in fact thinking about this creator, this amazing black woman, Jamila Reddy. And she has a newsletter, and I will link that in the show notes. She actually came up with this exhaustive list of things you can offer a grieving person. And it does not have to be, what would you want me to do? It is, hey, I'm around to wash your dishes if you like. Or hey, I was going for a walk. Let me know if you'd like to join me. No pressure. But it's almost how many invitations can you send out without expecting anything in return? And at the same time, knowing that every invitation you send out is an opportunity for the grieving person to know someone's out there checking in on me. Yeah. And I'm also thinking of that about the time my maternal grandfather passed away. I think I was about 14, 15, and my mother was, of course, grieving. And I still remember the food she cooked tasted different. And I remember Twendy being like really frustrated because the food just tasted so bland. And I I still remember that that moment, and I realized like how much my mother must have been grieving. Because she loved cooking, but the food just tasted so bland. And it was just this sense of how hard it is to be grieving and feel like you're a caregiver, also, because there are people who are depending on you. So I'm yeah, especially thinking about that in a productivity mindset place, whether it's in the West or anywhere else, when there's so much being demanded from you, and grief itself is demanding so much time and space. How do we get through, if not together, with the help of the community? Yeah.

Tolu 13:50

And I think collectively we need to change our relationship to Greece, right? Because we need one another to get through hard times. Right. Again, going back to the feeling you have to apologize for for your friend having to apologize for grieving, right? Since I think potori grief about their friend. Also, to like a lot of people feel shame about having griefs. Right. So we have to really, as a culture, learn to make more space for grief. Yeah. Because grief is very inconvenient. It is very inconvenient. All right. What do you mean I have to I struggling to get out of bed, but I have to like, I have to go to work, or I have to follow through my commitments and responsibilities. So grief, yeah, it's kind of pulls you down, right? But also there's nothing you can do about it, right? It's that's an appropriate reaction to losing someone. So grief is a yeah, it's it's a debilitating feeling. It can feel debilitating and calls paralysis at times, right? But also too, that's an appropriate response to have if you allow it. Obviously, like it's a spec a spectrum, I guess, but it's really important to allow grief to do what it needs to do. Right.

Gitika 15:12

Yeah. Yeah. And I also wonder about how when how to tell when grief is when grief is doing what it's supposed to do, like allowing grief to do what it's supposed to do, for sure. And when are we not allowing grief to do what it is supposed to do? Sometimes it's when we are suppressing grief altogether. But sometimes are there ways also that grief could end up being expressed in unwholesome ways? Like I'm wondering about that as well. Like, what are ways in which people can self-reflect on whether they are taking care of their grief in good ways? I don't know if there's something that comes to mind when you think about that.

Tolu 16:06

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's I don't know if the right word is concerning, but like I'm gonna use the word concerning, so that's what's coming up for me. When grief is causing a lot of isolation. Like I get it, you want to be alone, you want to feel it, but like when it spirals into like a really intense depression, right? I think that's important to be mindful of. That could lead to like behaviors that could become dangerous. Right. Excessive drinking, excessive drug use, right? Kind of those numbing those ways of numbing the pain. And that's when I think it becomes like concerning behavior, right? Those impulsive impulsive behaviors, concerning behaviors, right? Kind of leading into the more the self-destructive energy. Yes. Because that can happen if you don't know, if you don't have the capacity to be with the grief, yes, immediately go into like almost gonna numb out and just not think about it and just push it down, but it's gonna come up, right? So that's why it's so important to have grief practices around loss, around death, right? Culturally. And it it kind of is just it's dependent on the situation, right? You've made gone most of your life and haven't lost a loved one, and then boom, something happens and you lose the loved one, and you don't have the thing about the thing about grief that's funky is that you can't like anticipate it. I mean, about death is that it just kind of happens, yeah, and you don't can't build capacity around that. That makes sense. Like it's just really, it's really about how strong is your like community to look out for you, like your relationships, and how honest are you? Right, with I'm struggling, right? I really struggling to get out of bed, I'm struggling, I'm having a difficult time. So, what is your capacity, really, what is your capacity to be honest with your reality and to confront your reality?

unknown 17:59

Right.

Finding Anchors When Emotions Surge

Tolu 18:00

If you don't have capacity to confront your reality, of course you're not gonna have capacity to confront your grief, right? So it's not something you really kind of like create capacity for. I think it's really about what is your capacity to be honest with like your reality that's in front of you and can you face it honestly, even if it's scary as hell.

Gitika 18:23

Yeah. Because I'm also thinking about your capacity to confront your own reality, whatever that reality may be. Somewhere is also your capacity to look for anchors, no matter what's going on. Like there's this image that comes to mind of holding on to something as the river is flowing in great power, in order to ensure that the that you don't actually get swept away by the river. You hold on to something. Yes, it doesn't it doesn't make the river flow less, it doesn't make the river feel less harsh, but whatever you're holding on to ensures that you don't drown, you don't get swept away. So no matter how big your emotions are, whether it's grief or something else, is there a part of you that still continues to scan for an anchor? Or does it actively continue to bat away every anchor that's put in front of you? Like I don't want it, get away from me, I don't want to speak to anyone. And I think also what you were sharing about numbing when your emotions are so big that you're feeling them and not feeling them at the same time, that they're so big that you end up wanting to numb out. So that desire to numb out using substances versus using by actually leaning into something that can be a sustainable part of your life, like community or friendships or relationships. So for some people, it is spirituality and it is connecting to scripture and really withdrawing inward, but connecting with something bigger than themselves. So many people in my life who eventually started their spiritual practices after losing a significant person in their life, losing them to death, that is. So, this whole question of why are we here? Why are we born? Why do we live on this earth? What's the purpose of life? A lot of these questions actually come up in response to major losses, whether it's by death or bet whether it's like a major change in one's life, something that could have been unexpected or something that is like really big, that you end up looking for meaning and you wonder about the point of all of this. So I'm also thinking about how to me the way someone is dealing with an with a heavy emotion could be unwholesome when folks are declining any attempt to hold on to an anchor. The anchor does not have to be a therapist, it does not have to be your spouse, it can be something, but it are you willing to hold on to something, or are you for a very long time declining any effort to hold on? So yeah.

Tolu 21:39

Yeah, totally with thunder, right? So, yeah, what are you anchoring? And that's why it's so important to have those anchoring practices now, not when shit hits the stand. Right? Something happens unexpectedly, right? So, what are your anchoring practices? I think of them as a grounding practices. How do you connect to yourself? How do you kind of reroot, right? How do you re-root down?

unknown 22:02

Yeah.

Continuation Memory And Daily Practice

Tolu 22:06

How do we come back and connection reroot? Because like it's gonna happen. Loss is inevitable, it's part of the human experience, right? So we might as well have practices now that's spirituality, community, right? Relationships, connecting with nature, whatever practices that you have. Those are so important to have.

Gitika 22:25

Yeah. I'm also remembering teacher Zen Master Tiknathan, who would often talk about continuation. And so he didn't like anybody calling his birthday his birthday. He wanted to call it continuation day. Because he was just like, When were you really born? Was it when you were a cell in the universe that eventually became like a fetus and then became, then was born as a baby or whatever? And he's just like, when do you really know when were you born and when do you really die? So he's like, isn't it all actually about continuation? Yeah. How are you continuing beyond this human body? Is this the practice also? So sometimes when I have grieved anything or anybody, I think I have wondered about how will this person continue through me? Is it an action that they used to do that I will now make a part of my life? Or was there something they used to say, something that they reminded me about that I'll be like, okay, now this is a part of my life. So this is how this person continues through me. And I think that's that's another part of relationship building for me. It is about being remembered after you've left this body. And that process of remembering is one way that that grief is transformed into something else. And I won't, it's not like I stopped missing people, but they don't feel as far away anymore. In fact, I'm and I'm in fact, I'm just remembering like I spent time in the in my grandmother's house. She's no longer in her body, but my cousins and my aunt and all of us, we got together and spent time at my grandmom's house a few months ago. No, I think that back about two years ago. And I remembered something about that house, how infused it was with memories of my grandmother and all the things that she would do, a lot of stuff she'd left behind. And all of us were talking about her so much. It really felt like she was right there. Like she's just under the market or something. Yeah. But her presence was so profound, her influence was so profound. And remember, that was my first very genuine experiences of oh, people die, but they don't die. Like they stay with you when you remember them and continue them, they stay with you. So I think that's why yeah, that's that's just what's in mind.

Tolu 25:11

Yeah, you get rated Brockball. What practices or like what do you think we can invite the listeners to consider what comes to greed? Yes.

Gitika 25:27

I love that question. Is that something that comes to mind for you?

Tolu 25:31

I think creating practices around actually oh let me I think going let me back up being more honest about the reality that you're in, right? So confronting your reality honestly, right? So can you bear the joy, the goodness, right? Like can you confront it? Can you take it in without wanting to shrink or hide? And also too, can you confront the the grief, the disappointment, the sadness as well too, without wanting to numb, right? So can you make can both coexist in your space in your life? And can you have capacity for both? Right. Can you face the beauty and also can you face the grief at the same time? Can you do that? Can you build capacity for both, right? So think one informs the other, like they're actually very interconnected. So that's my offering to a listener. Can you can you confront both in the small things? Like in the small ways, can you notice how the sun shines on your face? And can you take in the warmth of the sun? Also, too, when you maybe read something, can you take a moment and pause and just send a prayer or a thought? Or there's something you can do, or if you see somebody on the street who is in need, who's a houseless person, can you offer them something? Right? Can you can we notice the difficult parts about our existence and not turn turn away but confronted? Right. Right? And can we also take in the beauty and delight and things that bring us choice well too without shrinking?

Gitika 27:11

Yeah. So the heart of it is making room for these both these realities, joy and sorrow, making room for both these realities is somewhere helping you make room for the toughest reality, which is when you have to grieve someone's loss. Yes. So as you build capacity in your everyday, you're actually eventually building capacity for the big stuff. Yes. As well. So building those rituals in your everyday life. And noticing all the things that grief is also teaching us, the small joys that we then feel sorrow over. Let's say I really enjoyed something, and then I feel sorrow when that thing gets over, or a relationship ends, or a great experience that you were having come comes to an end. Those are all these small experiences of loss. And we can also notice that that grief, the sadness, is actually teaching us about how important something was to us. It's just like all emotion, the grief is here with a message. So I would say like a ritual I would suggest is also letting your emotions, including grief, offer you feedback about what's important to you.

Tolu 28:43

Absolutely. And that's a gift too. Yeah. Well, we are at the end of today's episode. Thank you, Kitika. Thank you, Tolu. Thank you so much. Cheers. Until next time, y'all. Bye.