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06/15/2026

✨ Today I received a book blessing ✨

Not a book launch ~ a book blessing. There’s a difference.

A launch asks you to celebrate and sell. A blessing asks you to be with all of it. The joy and the fear. The grief and the comparison. The pride and the uncomfortableness.

My dear friend Nicole Nicole Heidbreder RN, BSN, MA hosted a book blessing for me ~ something I have held for many authors. The gift of being convened by someone else, of arriving without having to lead, of being witnessed in my messiness.

💫 Release Ritual. I spoke three fears aloud ~ fears I’ve carried in my body for over a year ~ and placed my hand where I felt them most. Everyone was invited to place their hands there too. Later, I burned the words, returned the ash to the earth, and released their hold over me.

💫 Presence Ritual. I held my book ~ actually held it ~ and described it to our community the way you describe something you love. The colours, the smell, the weight of it. For so long it existed only on a screen, and now to finally feel it in my hands is incredible! Lisa iilo Creative Alliance inc. made this book exactly what it needed to be, and I am so grateful ☺️

💫 Blessing Ritual. I tore the cover from a proof copy and asked my community to share their words with me ~ words I had given them or shown them, or words they thought I might need to be reminded of. I wrote every word down, cut them into pieces, and placed them in a jar.

🫙 My book blessing jar. When I wonder if any of this has mattered ~ I can shake the jar, pull out a word, and remember.

🧜‍♀️ I ended the day in the ocean, of course. I am so grateful to have been held today by so many elements of ritual and story. And by community, always.

💞

Ritual Without Religion is out now ~ link in bio.

We don't talk enough about anger as something sacred.At my January retreat on Bowen Island, we invited everyone to choos...
06/12/2026

We don't talk enough about anger as something sacred.

At my January retreat on Bowen Island, we invited everyone to choose a piece of discarded pottery from Melanie • Steele Ceramics — broken, imperfect pieces that had already been let go.

On each shard, we invited people to write what they were angry about. What they were pi**ed off at. What had been simmering in them, sometimes for years.

Then we gathered outside, and one by one, we threw our pottery into a bin and smashed it with a hammer.

I didn't know what to expect. I was not prepared for the wrath that came boiling out of all of us ~ the sound of it, the relief of it, the recognition in each other's eyes.

As women, we are taught to swallow our rage. To soften it, apologize for it, store it somewhere deep in our bodies where it won't inconvenience anyone. But anger that has nowhere to go doesn't disappear...it calcifies.

Ritual gives it somewhere to go.

One participant, completely unprompted, put her head into the bin of broken pottery and SCREAMED. Afterwards she said it reminded her of Florence Welch digging a hole into the earth and screaming into it with all her might ~ releasing what had been stored up for far too long.

Anger rituals aren't about staying angry. They're about letting the anger move through us instead of living in us. They're about witnessing each other in our full humanity ~ not just the soft parts, but the fierce parts too.

My invitation? Dig a hole, find a bin, hold a pillow...and SCREAM!

Last week I had the privilege of watching Dr. Gordon Neufeld celebrate twenty years of the . We celebrated the ripples, ...
06/10/2026

Last week I had the privilege of watching Dr. Gordon Neufeld celebrate twenty years of the . We celebrated the ripples, including the thousands of families (including my own), clinicians, and children whose lives have been shaped by his work.

And then he talked about ritual.

Rituals that can create space for sadness, like the lullaby, bringing our grief to the surface and given it a way to be expressed 🎶

Ceremonies that hold our relationships together. He spoke about why, as parents and as humans, we need rituals built into our daily lives to strengthen our bonds.

I left that evening more certain than ever that our conversation on July 19th needed to happen. I hope you join us ✨

https://www.beceremonial.com/the-ritual-series/the-science-of-ritual/

The Science of Ritual: A Conversation with Dr. Gordon Neufeld
Sunday, July 19th | 10:00–11:30am PST

Dr. Neufeld, developmental psychologist and co-author of Hold On to Your Kids with , is joining me to explore what actually happens when we engage with ritual.

What happens in our brains and nervous systems when we engage with ritual?

Why is ritual is so fundamental to attachment and belonging?

Why is a rhythm of ritual practice one of the most important things we can tend to?

This session will resonate deeply if you’re a parent, a therapist, a community builder, or simply someone who has always felt that ritual does something ~ and you want to finally understand what.

$30 for this session | $100 for all four

🔗 https://www.beceremonial.com/the-ritual-series/

06/08/2026

One year ago, I took a ferry over to Bowen Island to write my book.

I had been filling pages for years ~ stories, thoughts, fragments of ideas. It felt like I had the puzzle pieces but didn’t yet know what the puzzle was 🧩

I needed space away from everyday life (aka parenting!) to sort through all of it and find what I truly wanted to create and offer back to this world.

I asked my dear friend and designer Lisa to join me, and we spent a week at Penny Lou Writers Cottage dreaming this book into being.

That week was ceremonial from beginning to end ~ from how we stepped into the work (and ocean!), to how we untangled my ideas and started to envision how it would look and feel, to how we closed our time together.

On my last day, I collected the fallen petals from our flowers and sent them out into the water as a wish for what this book might one day become.

🌸

Lisa asked me the questions I didn’t know I needed to be asked. She helped me find what I was really trying to say, and what I wanted this book to do in the world. Her design process gave my book a feeling I couldn’t have imagined on my own. She helped me see the whole puzzle.

And her partner at Madelen brought her editorial eye to every draft, working through the pages with care and patience and a deep belief in what we were making together.

I could not have done this without you Lisa 💝 Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your friendship, your creativity, your trust in this book, and for the week on Bowen Island that started it all.

Now it’s out in the world and I can’t wait to see the ripples from what we created. 🌊

✨ Link in bio to order your copy ✨

Two books. One conversation about why ritual matters now more than ever.On July 12th, I’m sitting down with Bruce Feiler...
06/07/2026

Two books. One conversation about why ritual matters now more than ever.

On July 12th, I’m sitting down with Bruce Feiler ~ New York Times bestselling author of Life Is in the Transitions and his brand new A Time to Gather ~ to explore the nature of ritual itself.

What makes an act a ritual and not just a routine? What happens when the ceremonies we’ve inherited quietly disappear? Where do we begin to reclaim them?

This is the opening session of The Ritual Series, and I could not imagine a better person to begin this conversation with. Bruce has spent years ~ and 50,000 miles across 16 countries ~ documenting the global rise of reinvented ritual. His generosity in endorsing Ritual Without Religion means the world to me.

Join us July 12th, 10–11:30am PST. Virtual, recorded, and open to all.

🔗 Link in bio.

06/03/2026

The photo on the cover of my book isn’t just any photo. It was taken by during a grief ceremony in Lions Bay, BC in 2022.

A group of us met on the beach and I guided us through several rituals to acknowledge what we were each holding ~ and then we held it together, as a community of care.

I invited each person to choose an object on the beach that symbolised their grief. A heavy stone. A gnarly piece of driftwood. A ball of sand. We each shared what it meant to us and how it connected us to our grief ~ and then we threw our objects into the sea, along with some flower petals I collected to honour what we were releasing. We followed the objects in, plunging into the frigid ocean as the sun set.

We howled and cried and laughed. We found stillness in the cold water. We felt what we needed to feel.

We emerged, warmed up, and shared what we noticed.

It was one hour of my life that will be forever imprinted in my mind ~ a group of strangers sharing what was weighing on them, holding space, feeling connected to themselves, to each other, and to this majestic world.

When and I were deciding what image should grace the cover of my book, we knew this was the one. It holds so many stories in a single flower petal ~ the drop of water representing individual grief, the ocean representing our capacity to hold that grief together. It’s all so incredibly beautiful 🌼

Thank you, Felicia for sharing this image with us. It makes me feel so many things at once ~ and that is exactly what the power of ritual offers ~ it connects us to something bigger than ourselves.

✨ Ritual Without Religion is available now to order ~ and this story and more are shared in the book.

Link in bio.

Two women who have shaped the way I move through this world have read Ritual Without Religion ~ and I am so moved by the...
06/02/2026

Two women who have shaped the way I move through this world have read Ritual Without Religion ~ and I am so moved by their words.

Quanita Roberson ~ who you’ll meet in the pages of this book ~ was the one who first named the ceremony-shaped hole I had been circling for years. She has informed how I experience this world, how I support others, and how I show up for myself so that I can show up fully for everyone else. Her wisdom on aging, elderhood, and reconnecting with the elements has been nothing short of transformative for me.

Amy Wright Glenn, founder of the Birth, Breath & Death Institute, has been one of my most formative teachers. I’ve had the privilege of studying grief mentorship, rituals for menopause, rituals for pregnancy loss, and holding space for abortion under her guidance. Her work lives in my bones.

To have both of these women offer their words about this book is something I will carry for a long time.

Ritual Without Religion is now available to order ~ link in bio. 🌿

In honour of my new book Ritual Without Religion, I’m hosting four conversations ~ one for each section of the book: The...
06/01/2026

In honour of my new book Ritual Without Religion, I’m hosting four conversations ~ one for each section of the book: The Nature of Ritual, The Science of Ritual, The Art of Ritual, and The Practice of Ritual.

Something is shifting. People are stepping away from inherited traditions and reaching for something more personal, more meaningful. But without the old structures, how do we know how to mark what matters?

That’s exactly what we’re exploring in the opening session of The Ritual Series ~ and I couldn’t think of a better conversation partner than , author of the newly released A Time to Gather, to help us explore this topic.

On July 12th, we’ll dig into the deep roots of ritual, where they’ve frayed, and how people everywhere are finding their way back to meaning. This conversation feels incredibly important right now ~ I hope you’ll join us.

✨ The Nature of Ritual ✨

Sunday, July 12th
10–11:30am PST
via Zoom
$30 per session ~ $100 for the full series

Link in bio to register ↑

I want to introduce you to someone whose work I deeply admire.es.harrold is the author of Mothershift: Reclaiming Mother...
05/29/2026

I want to introduce you to someone whose work I deeply admire.
es.harrold is the author of Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage, host of The Becoming podcast, and the person who wrote the foreword for my new book, Ritual Without Religion.

Several years ago, I started following Jessie's Instagram and instantly felt a kinship with her. We had several friends in common (and are both Canadian!) so I reached out and asked to interview her on the Be Ceremonial podcast. That conversation felt like coming home ~ we could have talked for hours!

When I asked her to write my foreword, I knew her words would welcome people in with the same intentionality I wrote the book with. She shares part of her own story with courage, vulnerability, and compassion, and invites readers to open their minds and hearts as they dive in.

Thank you, Jessie, for your words, your presence, and your support over the years. 🙏

Follow Jessie .es.harrold and tune into the latest episode of The Becoming ~ where I share the story behind writing Ritual Without Religion. ✨

It's almost here ✨On Saturday, May 30th, my book ~ Ritual Without Religion ~ will officially be available for purchase! ...
05/28/2026

It's almost here ✨

On Saturday, May 30th, my book ~ Ritual Without Religion ~ will officially be available for purchase! 🎉

Part guidebook, part storytelling, this book is an invitation to understand what ritual is, how it works, and why it matters so much as we move through our lives.

A special thank you to for designing and editing the book with me, and to .es.harrold for writing the most beautiful, vulnerable foreword I could have hoped for. She welcomes you into this book as if she's welcoming you into her home.

Sign up for my newsletter to order your copy and hear about all the exciting things we have planned this summer!

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