Grieving and Ritualizing Marriage Death: The Garden as Outer World Companion and Inner World Landscape

Abstract

This thesis explores the disorienting journey through ambiguous loss experienced during the divorce process and ritual’s power to help reconcile the discrepancies between inner and outer worlds, both symbolically represented by the garden. Using both heuristic and alchemical hermeneutic methodologies, this exploration involves an intuitive inquiry through active imagination leading to a ritual in the garden. This inquiry grounds the importance of ritual work during a time of grieving as a person embarks on what depth psychotherapist Robert Romanyshyn described as a journey without a map. Supported by grief counselor Alan Wolfelt’s Eleven Essential Principles for companioning the mourner, the author explores how the garden can serve as an external companion to those who are grieving an ambiguous loss. Voices from depth psychology support this inquiry into how ritual can deepen bereavement work clinically.