Rituals are how humans have always carried change in their bones.
Birth. Puberty. Motherhood. Elderhood. Death.
The seasons. The harvest. The endings and beginnings.
For millennia, ritual has been the container through which we mark change — a way to embody transitions so we don’t have to carry them alone. But in modern life, many of these rituals have been lost, silenced, or left behind.
When we don’t mark these crossings, they still happen.
But without ritual, we are left heavier, carrying confusion, grief, and transition in our bodies when we aren’t meant to hold it.
A Personal Threshold: My Daughter’s Coming-of-Age
This summer, my daughter reached her Rite of Passage: Menarche, first blood.
*I want to note before I go any further that everything that I share about this experience is done with her blessing and agreement. Although this rite of passage affects more than the girl experiencing it, it is centered around her.
For years, I had carried a vision from my ancestors: fragments of a ritual once practiced by women in my lineage, perhaps a thousand years ago or more. It came to me in dreams, in whispers, in images too strong to ignore. But I often doubted myself.
Was it real? Was I making it up? And if it was real, was I the right one to bring it back?
The answer came in the simplest but deepest truth: I would do it with my greatest teacher — my daughter.
We wove the ritual together. With love. With respect. With trust. With honor. And in that act, she became not only the first daughter in centuries to grasp the thread again, but also the one who reminded me why ritual matters at all: because it helps us embody change, not just endure it.
This was not a performance. It was repair. A stitch in a torn lineage. A way of telling our foremothers: We remember. The thread is not broken.
Autism, Ritual & the Nature of Change
In our family, ritual is not abstract. It is a living necessity.
For autistic people and other neurodivergent folks, transitions are especially hard. Change can feel overwhelming, disorienting, and even destabilizing. My daughter shows me the importance of ritual every day. Our routines are rituals — the scaffolding that makes the unbearable bearable:
🍂 Going back to school
🎂 Birthdays
🌾 Seasonal shifts
To outsiders, these rituals may look small, ordinary, even rigid. But they are what help her navigate transitions and cross thresholds with more grace. They anchor her when the ground feels unsteady.
And the truth is: this isn’t just about being neurodivergent. This is human. We all need ritual because we are always in transition.
We’ve simply forgotten.
Why Rituals Matter Now
We live in a culture obsessed with speed, consumption, and convenience. In such a world, ritual can feel unnecessary — even indulgent. But what if ritual is exactly what we need to survive?
Rituals remind us to pause.
To embody what is happening, rather than just rushing past it.
To honor what we are leaving behind, and prepare to carry what’s ahead.
In the old ways, no threshold went unmarked. There were rites of passage for every stage of life, ceremonies for each turning of the seasons, blessings for birth and burial alike. These weren’t optional extras — they were how communities processed change together.
Without them, we are left to navigate transitions alone. We carry grief without outlets, beginnings without blessings, endings without closure. No wonder so many of us feel lost, untethered, disconnected from meaning.
The Threshold We Are In
Right now, we are at a seasonal threshold: summer tipping into autumn.
The light wanes, school begins, rhythms shift. For many parents, this threshold is heavy with mixed emotions — relief at the return of structure, sadness at summer’s end, anxiety at what lies ahead.
In our home, we honor this shift through ritual.
🌀 A back-to-school charm bag to ease the transition.
🕯️ A Threshold Ritual that acknowledges the grief of endings and blesses the beginning of new routines.
These rituals don’t erase the challenge of change. But they give it shape, a container, a way to move with more grace.
Reviving What Was Lost
When I brought my daughter’s first blood ritual into being, I realized something profound: none of us must be perfect to revive ritual.
You don’t need every historical detail.
You don’t need a priesthood or an ancient manual.
You need only presence, intention, and courage to listen to what is being asked of you now.
Sometimes, rituals come as downloads — visions, dreams, ancestral whispers. Sometimes, they come from fragments passed down in families: a prayer at the table, a candle lit at dusk, a handful of herbs tied above a door.
These fragments matter.
They are threads waiting to be picked up and woven into being once more.
And when we pick them up — even imperfectly — we stitch something vital back into the living fabric of our culture.
Ritual as Ancestral Repair
We are not the first to lose rituals. The threads have unraveled many times — through conquest, conversion, displacement, and cultural silencing.
But every time we return to ritual, we repair a little of what was broken. We say: the line is not cut. We still remember.
In this sense, ritual is not just personal practice. It is cultural medicine.
It heals the rift between generations.
It strengthens us for what lies ahead.
It roots us in belonging that no empire, no system, no oppression can erase.
A Call Back to Ritual
You don’t have to begin with something grand.
Light a candle at dusk.
Offer a prayer of thanks before a meal.
Mark the turning of the season with a walk, a song, a shared story.
Each small act of ritual reminds us we are part of something larger.
That we are not alone in change.
That the ancestors walk with us still.
Closing & Invitation
Rituals are not relics. They are living practices.
They help us carry change in our bones — with more grace, more meaning, more belonging.
And as we stand in this seasonal threshold, moving from the brightness of summer into the golden hush of autumn, I invite you to mark the crossing with me.
🌿 Inside the Old Ways for Modern Days Library, you’ll find:
✨ A back-to-school charm bag ritual
✨ An audio-guided Threshold Ritual (summer → autumn)
✨ Seasonal guides, recipes, and reflections for each month of the year
Membership supports my podcast, my upcoming book (Witches’ Brews), and the creation of free resources for our community.
Because ritual isn’t optional.
It’s how we remember who we are.
Related Posts:
Parentalia & the Weight of Inheritance: Reverence, Reckoning, & Repair
Dísablót: Honoring the Ancient Feminine Powers
Golden Light & Battle Flowers: Honoring Freya & the Valkyries at Midsummer
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