Psychology Today March/April 2022 pp20-23|Relationships Heartbreak|”When a Ritual Heals Heartbreak” “A personal tradition helped me overcome the pain of divorce” “A NEW CHAPTER: Florence Williams spent time in nature to process her divorce” By Florence Williams
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Summary by 2244
The author recalls that day “in May when [she] decided to throw my wedding ring into the river.” Her “brain [at the time] was like a Maytag of recrimination, blame, self-pity, fear, always in the spin cycle.” A story of college love and then relinquishment as they “gradually became less connected to each other.” She wanted to keep trying but he didn’t. “I wanted him to still love me,” but despite more than two decades together and two children, “I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t.” “Finally, I saw that I needed to try to stop figuring and to let go.”
But how to let go?
As an interesting twist, the author “visited the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia.” That there is such a place where scores of the brokenhearted send in their unique stories speaks to the commonality in normal life of heartbreak. The founders, Olinska Vistic and Drazen Grubisic couldn’t figure out what to do with a keepsake from their relationship and decided that “Heartbreak…was in need of ritual.” Something that would help bring resolution, a divorce ritual, something that some researchers report actually helps one, as part of the grieving process, to recover.
What is a ritual?
The author writes what constitutes a ritual, “a symbolic activity that is performed either before or after a meaningful event and is intended to achieve some desired outcome, from alleviating grief to winning a competition to making it rain.” Too as suffering from the grief of death, a relationship ritual helps most when “it is validated, shared and witnessed.” Apparently, in Japan, famous for rituals, a couple or “one-half” of a couple will hire a divorce ceremony planner to help." Think flowers, food, music, friends and an ending ritual. In the author’s case she performed a “Releasing of the past” by launching her “wedding ring into the Potomac river” after spending time in nature.
And afterwards
The author notes “I still believe in love. I still believe that for many of us, a strong partnership can be a wonderful way to move through an unpredictable world.” But there are alternatives the best being “family [and] community.”