Claiming Voice Through Ritual

A few minutes before my client arrived I was changing the flowers in my office vase.  As I took the dying flowers out, I was feeling unsettled about throwing them away since there were still some robust flowers atop the dying stems.

It occurred to me that these flowers were a metaphor to my client’s experience.  He was in the process of uncoupling a long term partnership.  Parts of his relationship were dying, yet there were many beautiful elements of their relationship that would remain intact.

I became inspired to use the flowers in his session.

We spent the first half of the session talking.  Significant connections were made between his past experiences, his present situation, and his future dreams.

For the second half of the session we did a ritual.  

As he picked off a piece of a dying stem and threw it into the trash, he verbalized something he was letting go of as his relationship was changing form.  Then, as he picked a robust flower off a stem and placed it next to him, he verbalized something beautiful that he was taking with him from his experience.  He alternated back and forth until he felt complete.

As much as he gained from our exploration in the first half of the session, it wasn’t until he did this ritual that I witnessed a deep and powerful shift.

The ritual brought him safely into his emotions.  In each piece of letting go and identifying beauty, he was able to honor his grief and loss as well as his strength and his optimism. He was talking and feeling and accessing his highest wisdom – an embodied integration of mind, body and spirit.  

He left the session more raw and vulnerable than I’ve seen him before, but also more empowered and clear.

And the flowers – how grateful I am for their healing powers!  Showing us the way through nature’s cycles of growth, loss and rebirth.