Simple Grief Ritual: A 5-Minute Practice for Loss

Tip: Listen, then read. This post is a perfect match for Joy Lab podcast episode 249: Everything We Love, We Will Lose: Navigating the First Gate of Grief.

Everything we love, we will lose... That sounds depressing, but there's something surprisingly liberating about this truth.

This is the first of Francis Weller's Five Gates of Grief, and it's the most common entry point we all face. The death of someone we love, losing a cherished place, abilities our bodies once had, even small losses that signal something bigger.

Why We Need Grief Skills

Here's the thing: grief isn't just a feeling. It's a skill. And like any skill, we need to practice it regularly—kind of like flossing, but for your body, mind, and heart.

Francis Weller writes that "ritual is a maintenance practice that offers us the means of tending wounds and sorrows, for offering gratitude, allowing our psyches regular periods of release and renewal." Translation: we need to work with grief often, in small doses, so it doesn't pile up and knock us flat when the big losses hit.

Research on impermanence backs this up. When we consciously reflect on the temporary nature of things, we actually experience more gratitude, more positive emotions, and deeper satisfaction in our relationships. The practice doesn't make loss hurt less—it helps us hold both love and loss at the same time.

Simple Joy Practice: The 5-Minute Grief Micro-Ritual

Here's a practice you can do as regularly as your morning coffee:

Set a timer for 5 minutes.

Name it. Acknowledge a smaller loss—something you feel capable of touching for just a moment. It doesn't have to be heavy. Maybe it's a friendship that faded, a place you loved that's changed, or yes, your ability to do the worm.

Feel it. Notice where this loss shows up in your body. Does your chest feel tight? Is there a lump in your throat? Let your body move with it if it wants to—cry, stomp, laugh, whatever comes up (as long as it's safe for you and others). If it becomes too much, come back to your breath. Feet on the ground. You can touch grief in bits at a time.

Nourish yourself. When the timer goes off, end with something that engages your senses and nourishes you. Give yourself some loving self-talk out loud: "This is hard and I'm resilient." Put a hand on your chest. Hug someone. Bake something. Take a warm bath. Play basketball and work on your three-pointers.

This simple practice does something powerful: it reminds you that you can touch grief, feel it, and come back out. It creates safety around loss. And it trains you to hold both the love and the grief—because the skill of this first gate is learning to love more deeply, not less.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estés reminds us: "Everything we love will be taken from us. Everything. Last of all life itself. Yet this reality does not diminish love. It shows us that loving is the most important business."