Raw, Ruined, and Rising: The Unexpected Magic in Grieving Messily

A story about my first ritual after loss—and the messiness of healing.

It was supposed to be a sacred moment—some incense, a little candlelight, and a quiet journal entry. My first real attempt at grieving through ritual. It was going fine until the fire alarm went off.

Picture it: a chilly Tuesday evening. I was on the floor of our apartment in my comfiest cardigan (which was aggressively pilled and deeply judgmental in the mirror), a half-circle of candles flickering around me, and a stick of sandalwood incense burning like a beacon for the ancestors—or at least that’s what the packaging promised. My journal was open to a blank page. The dog was suspiciously quiet. And I was trying, with every fiber of my metaphysically-curious-but-cynical heart, to feel something.

Anything.

Instead, I got a fire alarm, a barking dog, and the distinct smell of scorched despair.

This was my first attempt at ritual after the kind of loss that leaves you both hollow and sharp. You know the kind. The kind where you’re fine—totally fine—until you’re in the grocery store holding a bag of onions and you start crying because they smell like something your grandmother used to cook. The kind where you forget and remember all at once, and the remembering guts you in the canned goods aisle.

And everyone says things like, “Maybe try a ritual. It might help you process.”
Which sounds lovely in theory. But here’s the thing I didn’t expect about grieving through ritual: it’s not a moment of calm—it’s a confrontation with chaos, tears, and fire hazards.

In practice? It was an unholy combination of fire hazards and emotional vulnerability. My specialty.

The Good Intentions Starter Pack

I’d been circling the idea of ritual for weeks, like a cat trying to decide if the suspicious-looking pillow is nap-worthy or full of bees. I wasn’t new to the concept. I’ve read the books. I run a metaphysical store, for crying out loud. I own incense. But there’s a difference between selling it to tourists and lighting it with your heart cracked wide open.

Grief had made everything sticky. My thoughts. My motivation. My breath. I didn’t know what I needed, but the idea of creating space to feel something other than anxious dread seemed worth a shot.

So I gathered my tools:

• A few candles that smelled vaguely of pine and poor decisions.
• An old journal.
• A tiny thrifted dish of salt.
• An incense blend called “Sacred Stillness,” which—spoiler alert—turned out to be 80% cedar and 20% smoke demon.
• And a carefully curated playlist called “Feelings, Ugh.”

I lit the candles. I arranged the items with the reverence of someone trying not to knock anything over with her butt. I sat cross-legged on the floor, took a deep breath, and struck the match.

When the Smoke is Too Real

You know how in movies the smoke from incense coils gently upward like the spirits of ancient wisdom are gathering for a TED Talk?

Yeah. No.

This stuff erupted like it had been waiting for years to take revenge on my sinuses. I coughed. The dog sneezed. One of the candles flickered dramatically, like it, too, had concerns.

Still, I pushed forward.

I wrote down a few intentions. Mostly vague things like, “Let me feel what I need to feel,” and “Please don’t let me cry so hard I throw up again.”

I breathed. I tried to imagine the smoke carrying my grief upward, transforming it into something lighter.

That’s when the incense stick collapsed into a bundle of old rosemary on the altar and poof—we had flames.

Ritual Interrupted

I should’ve been calm. Grounded. Spiritually present.
Instead, I was flapping at a small fire with my journal like a metaphysical maniac.

The smoke alarm went off. The dog howled. I tripped over a bowl of salt, stubbed my toe on the altar leg, and shouted something that was definitely not sacred.

By the time I got the windows open and the fan blasting, I’d managed to extinguish both the flame and any remaining dignity. The incense was still smoldering, now wedged in a cracked ceramic holder that looked like it had seen some things. Same, honestly.

I stood there in the smoky aftermath, surrounded by a battlefield of half-melted candles, crumpled tissues, and the lingering aroma of spiritual arson, wondering what the actual hell I was doing.

The Problem with Grieving Through Ritual (When You’re Not Exactly Stable)

Here’s the part no one tells you: grief doesn’t care how beautiful your altar is.
It doesn’t care about aesthetics or how many times you’ve read Women Who Run With the Wolves or how perfectly you’ve arranged your crystals in a sacred geometry pattern you saw on Instagram.

Grief is feral.
It’s unshowered, sobbing-on-the-bathroom-floor energy.
It’s rage and numbness and forgetting how to eat.
It’s needing ritual not because it’s tidy and profound, but because it’s the only thing that keeps you upright for three consecutive breaths.

That night, my ritual was a disaster. Not because it went “wrong,” but because it didn’t go the way I thought it was supposed to. I expected peace. Insight. A whisper of divine clarity.

What I got instead was a masterclass in how grieving through ritual can sometimes look more like emotional demolition than divine serenity.

But Then…

Once the noise died down (internally and externally), I found myself sitting in the quiet.
Not the curated, candlelit silence I had planned for.
The real kind. The kind that happens after the chaos. When your body is too tired to perform anymore. When the grief has wrung you out like a dishcloth.

I sat there in the half-light, barefoot and burnt out, and I remembered something small.

A story my mother used to tell me about her mother. Something about how she would light a candle every night, not to pray—but to remind herself the dark didn’t win.

Just one flame.
Just a ritual.
Nothing fancy. Nothing Instagrammable.
But it meant something.

And suddenly, I wasn’t just doing this for myself anymore.
I was doing it with them. My mother. Her mother. Every woman who ever stood in her kitchen, holding grief in one hand and a match in the other, trying to keep going.

Rituals like these are often recommended as a way to process grief (here’s why, according to Psychology Today)—but nobody talks about what happens when they go sideways.

The Real Magic

No signs from the universe appeared that night.
No ancestors showed up in the smoke to offer guidance.
But I didn’t need them to.

Because the ritual did work.
Just not in the way I expected.

It cracked something open. Not the kind of opening you chase with crystals and mantras. The kind that happens when you finally let go of trying to do it “right.”

I cried. I laughed—mostly at myself. I fed the dog and blew out the candles. I cleaned up the salt and made a mental note to move the rosemary next time.

And then, for the first time in weeks, I slept.

Not well. But still. I slept.

What I Learned (So You Don’t Burn Down Your Living Room)

1. Don’t light six incense sticks at once. No matter how dramatic it looks on TikTok.
2. You’re allowed to grieve messily. Rituals aren’t performances. You don’t need to earn your own healing.
3. Showing up is the magic. The candles, the herbs, the journal—those are tools, not prerequisites. The ritual is you, being willing to feel something instead of nothing.
4. Your grief doesn’t have to be quiet to be sacred. Sometimes it screams. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it needs you to laugh in the middle of it all.
5. Start where you are. Even if that’s sobbing on the kitchen floor surrounded by smoke and regret.

If you’re just starting out and feeling a little lost, you might also like this beginner’s guide to spiritual practice for skeptics.

The Takeaway

I’ll try again. Because grieving through ritual isn’t about perfection—it’s about permission. The permission to show up messy, emotional, and cracked open. If you’ve ever tried to find healing through ritual and ended up making a mess instead—congratulations. You’re doing it.

Spiritual practice isn’t about perfection.
It’s about presence.
Even if your presence smells like scorched cedar and salty tears.

You don’t have to be “ready.” You don’t need a cauldron or a perfect playlist.
You just need to be willing to sit with yourself—especially when you don’t know what you’re doing.

Because sometimes healing isn’t about transcendence.
Sometimes grieving through ritual is about sitting in the smoke, side-eyeing the universe, and deciding to try again tomorrow.

With less incense.

P.S. The Aftermath

The dog’s fine.
The apartment still smells like grief and sandalwood.
And the incense? I buried what was left in the backyard, ceremoniously, with a shovel and a grudge.

In Closing..

If you’ve ever found yourself sobbing into your herbal tea while the smoke alarm screams and your spirit guide is suspiciously silent, you are very much my people.

The first book in the Backcountry Mystic series launches May 26.
It’s full of metaphysical mayhem, accidental wisdom, and the kind of characters who light too much incense and hope for the best.

✨ Join my mailing list below for sneak peeks, special offers, and behind-the-scenes chaos.
✨ Or just to keep me accountable for not starting another small fire.

💜 Everlie