Ancestral Grief Ceremony

I entered my last counselling supervision session for 2025 exhausted and heavy hearted. I needed a holiday!

It had been such a BIG year of personal and collective grief for me and for my clients.

I put my hand up to be the demo client for an Internal Family Systems Session so the other therapists could observe. 

My supervisor guided me to tune into my body and there it was….a heavy weight on my heart.*

He guided me to welcome the heavy weight with my breath and to ask what else this part wanted me to know. It was huge, black, a 1 ton weight and I felt as though I was drowning in it.

‘What else does this part want you to know?’ he asked and I’m surprised when the answer is ‘I’m not all yours….I am the Grief of the World.’    The grief felt immense, overwhelming and too much to bear.

So I called in the ancestor guides, with well and whole spirits, and they surrounded the grief of the world with their kind and wise presence, giving the grief lots of space.

And the ancestors kept showing me that there were flowers and dancing on the edge of the circle of grief.

Suddenly I was transported to a memory of my Pop’s funeral at 14, where the grief was too much to bear and it was important that all the young grandchildren went to the park over the road and released all of that energy and tension, that they were allowed to be silly and joyful. 

Oh the relief!

And the ancestors said ‘yes, leave this grief ceremony to us and go and play, be silly and joyful, put down the grief of the world for a while, leave it with us…’

Oh the relief!

And in my mind’s eye I went off to play in the park and be silly for a while.  

I enjoyed my holiday and I am still giving thanks to the Ancestors, knowing now we are not meant to carry the grief of the world on our own.

*In the Internal Family Systems Model and the Ancestral Lineage Healing program with Daniel Foor, we call in the ancestors with well and whole spirits when we are overwhelmed with emotion using what Jung would call active imagination, a tool that cultures across time have used for healing.  Ancestors may include ancestors of blood lineage, ancestors of the land you are on or ancestors of Spirit (this may include recently passed ancestors such as Joanna Macy but only if you intuit in the process that this ancestor is ready and available and well to support you in the healing process).

Sara Phillips is an IFS-Informed therapist (Internal Family Systems) and a Deep Ecology Facilitator in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.  This is Sara’s personal experience of the power of bringing in the gifts of the ancestors in IFS therapy and in working with eco-grief, something cultures across time have known and something she is only just learning to bring into her own life and into her work with clients.