Episode 152: Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration, and Change with Day Schildkret

The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast

We’re always going through some kind of loss, celebration, or change in our lives. Joining me to discuss the importance of ritual during times of great transition is Day Schildkret. Day is internationally known for the creation of Morning Altars, beautiful pieces of impermanent art. He is also the author of Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration, and Change. A conversation about divorce is a conversation about endings. In order to begin again, it is important to mark this transition. Putting things in order through ritual can be healing. It helps you to feel resourced, reoriented, supported and witnessed. Learning how to let go and honor what once was, through ritual, is such an important topic. I hope you truly enjoy this conversation.

“Endings are valuable. The better you can end something, the better you can begin something new.”

Show Highlights

• Why Day says, “You have to change with change.” And what it means to participate in ending something, such as a relationship or marriage. (7:52)
• Endings need more from us than just going through the threshold. (10:02)
• Ritual: what it is and how it helps. (11:26)
• Why you need witnesses for endings as much as you do for beginnings. Witnesses affirm you are not alone and also acknowledge that change is happening. (12:17)
• Life transitions: we need to mark the places where we are turning, if we don’t we still think we are on the same path. (15:54)
• Day talks about Morning Altars and how divorce and grief inspired him to start this practice of creating impermanent art from nature. (23:51)
• Rituals always have a beginning, middle, and end. They are contained and allow the space for grief, uncertainty, and emotion. They encourage wholeness. (29:20)
• Day talks us through one of the divorce rituals from his book Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration, and Change. (31:31)
• There is a right and wrong time to do a ritual. If you are in the heat of a divorce or transition, it may not be the right time. (35:07)
• The importance of moving from grievance into grief. (38:47)

Learn more about Day Schildkret:

DAY SCHILDKRET is internationally known for Morning Altars and has inspired tens of thousands of people across the globe to heal and connect with nature, art and ritual. BuzzFeed calls Day's work, “a celebration of nature and life.”

Day's first book, Morning Altars: A 7-Step Practice to Nourish Your Spirit through Nature, Art and Ritual (The Countryman Press/WW Norton) ignited an international movement with a practice that renews and redeems our relationship to the living world. He recently launched the inaugural cohort of the year-long Morning Altars Practitioner Training & Certification with 100 students from five different continents. Day has an ever-growing and active audience of 64k followers on Instagram, over 25k on Facebook.

Day has taught workshops and created large-scale installations at Google, The 9/11 Memorial Plaza, The Hammerstein Ballroom, The Andy Warhol Foundation, California Academy of Sciences, 1440 Multiversity, Lakewood Historic Cemetery, Wellspring Conference, The Culture Conference, Wisdom 2.0 Conference, Wanderlust Festival, The Assemblage, The Alchemist Kitchen, Butte College, Naropa University, the ReImagine End-of-Life Festival, and many others.

Day’s art is on permanent exhibition at the California Museum of Oakland and had been featured in the store windows at ABC Carpet and Home in NYC. Day has appeared on NBC, CBS, in the award-winning SoulPancake YouTube video series and in a stop-motion animated film on UpliftTV. His work has been featured in BuzzFeed, Vice, Well+Good, My Modern Met, Spirituality & Health Magazine.

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