Integration Weaving Circles

In general, from birth, we go through specific life events that are considered benchmarks for an integrated growth process; birthdays, ceremonies, puberty (including the menstrual cycle for girls), graduation, losing one’s virginity, getting married, giving birth, disease, abuse (on any level), divorce, death, going through big losses (financial, physical and spiritual…), war and ancestral conflicts. immigration and the list goes on. There is nothing new to all these events. What is new is the impact that they leave on the modern psyche that has shifted over time to being separate from nature and others. All those events were processed differently in previous times because they were experienced in community. Nowadays, community is being called upon again to bring us together in celebrations and losses. 

 

In shamanism, these events are known as a rite of passage that used to be honored by caretakers and elders and somehow, along the way, the car or the gift replaced  the ritual. 
In a rite of passage or a dark night of the Soul as described by Joseph Campbell and others before him, the individual is experiencing a transition. One that includes a  departure (separation from the group), entering the liminal (betwixt and between) and a return to the group. 
This used to be a healthy cycle that somehow got interrupted at the departure and the liminal space and there has been less integration into the group and life altogether.