Ideas for Divorce Rituals: The Primary Questions

Honoring the end of a marriage through a divorce ritual or ceremony (or breakup ritual) expresses a commitment to taking care of your own heart and mind. It helps you process the entire journey of the relationship, and provides closure, and supports your empowered entry into the next chapter of your life.

There are unlimited options and ideas for divorce rituals; You will get the most out of one that is designed and tailored for you. To determine what would be most meaningful and potent for you, consider the following questions, which will be further explored below.

Who would you want there to witness or participate?
What environment would support your deepest, most authentic experience?
What processes or activities will you do?
What tools or objects will you use?

Who Participates in your Divorce Ritual?

A meaningful divorce ritual can be done by yourself. If you want to stretch yourself, you can even consider sharing the ritual with your ex-spouse. You might want certain friends of family there to silently witness, or to actively participate in some way.

Be intentional about who, and why you are inviting others to support your experience. Don’t be shy or reluctant to ask for others’ support. There are lots of organizations and support systems for people grieving the death of a loved ones. However, there is scarce societal resources or understanding around grieving the loss of significant relationships. Calling in your own support network helps recognize the reality of this grief.

Inviting your community to participate may also serve them. The people in your community that have been connected to your marriage have their own feelings, and your divorce ceremony could give them a way to process and get closure.

Lastly, the people who participate can witness, cheer you on, and hold the vision for what you are proclaiming for yourself now and your future.

What Environment is Best for your Divorce Ceremony?

The environment that is best for your ritual will be one that is private, with minimal external noise and distraction. Most importantly, choose a space that will maximize your comfort and emotional safety, so you can be your most authentic self. Is that at a home you will be leaving, or at a new home? A church or community center?

Depending on what activities or processes you use, a natural setting next to a lake or river, or a clearing in the forest might be the most supportive space.

In terms of the setting, also consider the timing, as every aspect of your ritual can have embedded meaning. For example, you might want to hold it in the morning, at sundown, or later in the evening. You might want to do it on the new moon, which supports new beginnings. Or, you might pick a significant calendar day, such as New Year’s Day, or the same day you were married.

Standard Ritual Structure Ideas

Part of what gives a ritual power is their structure. Thus, while you can be creative about how you do it, here are some important elements:

Creating the Space: This can be an alter with pictures, candles, stones or other sacred objects, or just beautifying the space in some way. Create a threshold by making a circle with yarn, flowers, branches, etc, that will contain the ritual. This could also be a doorway, a ring of trees, or other natural container.
Presence: Once all the participants are present and settled, begin with some moments of silence to help everybody calm, breathe into their bodies, and relax into the present moment. This helps heighten the meaning and impact of the experience.
Opening Prayers: Inviting, thanking and asking for assistance from the (spiritual presence) of those that love you, and/or ancestors, and whatever divine entities you feel most connected to.
Stating Intentions: speaking aloud (and most importantly feeling in your heart) your goals and intentions for healing, closure, and anything else.
Crossing the Threshold: Step into the container you created. This facilitates the entering of “liminal”, or non-ordinary ways of thinking, feeling, and being. Singing a simple song, tone, drum or other simple instrumental music can support this transition.
Ritual Activities / Processes: The heart of the ritual, where you do the “work” (the planned processes or activities). There are lots of divorce ritual activity ideas in the next section below.
Bringing Closure: Express gratitude and intentionally exit the ceremony space (the circle or threshold). Release and thank any of the spiritual presences you invited in for support.
Celebration: Share nourishing snacks and liquids, share reflections, music, dance, playfulness.

Divorce Ritual Activities / Processes

Listed below are some common objectives, and some ideas for your divorce ritual processes or activities. Be creative about how they are done. You might include a coule of the objectives, or several of them in your ritual. Any of the objectives can be done in unlimited ways, including verbal speaking, silently thinking and feeling, writing, creating hands on art or craft, using movement or music, and any combination of expression.

If there are others participating, consider how you want to involving them for each process. Do you want them to be silent, expressing, echo something, place hands on you, creating some art or craft themselves, softly hum or sing, etc.? Give clear directions, and remember, they are here to support you!

Taking Stock of the Marriage

Calling to mind or otherwise expressing a summary of your marriage or relationship. You might verbally state when you met, what drew you together, what you had in common, the places you lived, what you accomplished individually or collectively, naming the children you created or raised, what you learned or how you grew through the relationship, etc. This also works well as a drawing or collage.

Grieving or Expressing Regrets

Feeling deeply into your body, breathing into and fully expressing any grief about the love, companionship, dreams, etc. that have been lost. This might include deep sadness about any impact of the divorce on your children, your community, your health, home, financial stability, etc.

You might be mourning or expressing your regrets, how you wish you could have shown up or responded differently. You might express regrets and sadness over your ex’s failures and limitations in the relationship. You might want your supportors to hold you, or to simply respond “we hear you.” You might ask them to share their own grief about the marriage ending.

The grieving activities are often combined with activities focused on releasing / letting go.

Releasing / Letting Go

Actively releasing your relationship, commitments (including vows), roles you played or identities you inhabited, dreams for the relationship future, hurt, anger, and grief after divorce can be one of the most powerful ways to process the end of your relationship.

Releasing happens best in nature. It is bolstered by stating aloud what you are letting go of, and working with tangible objects that are imbued with what you are releasing. You might write them on individual slips of paper and call them out as you feed them into the fire. Or write them on tree bark and feed them into a river. You can prepare cloth tobacco ties for each piece you are releasing, tie them to a branch, and feed that into a fire.

Are there objects which signified your partnership, marriage or dreams together? It can be especially potent to transform these objects. Consider how to handle your wedding ring in divorce. Maybe there is a framed photo of you together or your family; you can replace the photo with one of you and your children, friends, or birth family. Maybe you bought plates or christmas ornaments together, which you can destroy. Maybe you can buy the wine you shared in marriage, share it with your friends, and smash the bottle. Maybe you planted a rose bush, which you can dig up and replant in a forest or public park.

A cord cutting ritual is a very frequently used process for releasing emotional and energy connections, or “cords” that tie you to your ex spouse and the marriage that has ended.

Forgiving Self / Other in Divorce

Developing forgiveness for yourself is vital. Even if you have plenty of valid reasons to blame your ex for the breakdown in the marriage, you likely have pieces for which you blame yourself.

Self forgiveness is most effective when stated aloud, felt in your heart, and accompanied with compassion for the reasons, the positive needs you were trying to meet in your actions or behaviors in the relationship. With self-acceptance and learning, self-forgiveness helps us integrate the lessons so we can avoid a future repeat. What action or object would demonstrate self-forgiveness?

If you have the capacity to access forgivness for your ex spouse, this can provide a much deeper clearing. What are their qualities, words, or actions that you are carrying resentment around? Try to find compassion, to see the other’s fear or confusion, their attempts to protect themselves in those actions. Keep in mind that creating forgiveness for another is self-serving, it is for you, as “Resentment corrodes the pot it is held in.”

Feeling deeply into forgiveness can be well supported with playing, singing, or chanting a relevant forgiveness song.

Learning and Harvesting

The blame and resentments you carry towards your ex maintains emotional and energetic chords between you. If the story you tell about the marriage and divorce is focused on your own victimhood, this will block your own empowerment, self-trust, and clarity moving forward. We are destined to reproduce our circumstances unless you we have integrated the lessons the relationship offered.

Harvesting the lessons of a relationship can look many ways. The relationship might have provided lessons about yourself and what you need, or about life, work, or community. Or, you might acknowledge the ways you acted or behaved that didn’t support your marriage / relationship, and what you would do differently in future relationships.

Letter writing and / or reading is well sutied for harvesting learning. You could write and read aloud a letter to your future self, reminding them of the lessons you learned. You could write a letter to your ex about the lessons you learned (even if you never send it.) You might expand your perspecitive by imagining and trying to understand your ex’s experience of the relationhip. Then, write a letter to yourself, as if it is being written from your ex.

Lastly, you might write the “story” of your relationship and divorce, in a way that minimizes blame, and highlights the lessons or gifts each of you got from the relationship.

Well-Wishing the Other / Future Definition

Even if you are still hurting, speaking your positive hopes for your ex’s future can be helpful. Expressing your hope for their peace, relief, or happiness can also strengthen your own forgivess and releasing.

If you are going to have a future relationship with your ex from the necessity of sharing children, pets, friends, or work, then defining your future relationship is a crucial step. One divorce ritual idea is drawing or painting a picture of how you related to each other before, and how you will relate in the future. Or you might do something similar, working with clay. Clarify what your healthy boundaries will be. Plan and practice a new response for any behavior of your ex’s that hooks you.

Calling In / Commitments to Yourself

Divorce is a death and re-birth process. In the final stage of your divorce ritual, you will want to clarify and affirm how you want to be, and/or what you want to experience in this next chapter of life. Here, you will be imagining, and living into what it feels like to be completely whole, healed and vital in your own life.

You might want to remember and celebrate your positive qualiies, and the gifts you bring to your community. When you release emotions, energies, habits, stories and identities, it creates a void, a space in your heart, mind, and spirit. What are you replacing that with? If you do not inhabit the void with your positive intentions, it will gradually, unconsciously fill back up with old patterns and behaviors.

Some of the activites that pair well with “calling in” include rewriting your wedding vows to focus on your own well-being, having your friends verbally reflect your committments, owning a new, or reclaiming a previous name or nick-name, creating a vision board or other art project. What other objects or activities demonstrate and integrate your vision for your new and future self? You might plant and care for a fruit-bearing tree, go on a vacation, get a new haircut or clothes, etc.

Requests for support

Whether they are holding you while you grieve or verbally reflecting your new self-vows, there are many ways your friends and family might participate throughout your divorce ritual. However, you may have special requests for your future, for supporting your transition into your new life. Try to be clear about what those requests are. Here are some examples:

“If I am complaining about my ex or the divorce, ask me what I am feeling and needing at that moment.”
“Even if you dislike them, refrain from talking negatively about my ex, as they are still my children’s parent, and I need to get along with them.”
“Keep inviting me to fun and social activities, even if I decline the invitations for awhile.”

Separation / Breakup Ritual Processes with Your Ex

If your relationship with your ex is civil and safe enough to share a divorce or breakup ritual, all the divorce ritual ideas in this article are relevant. However, your approach might be different.

For full buy-in and participation, you will want to plan the ritual with your ex. If that sounds stressful, invite a trusted third person to help you discuss and plan it. Clarify all the details (who is bringing what, by when).

For anything you will be expressing or sharing with each other, make clear agreements ahead of time about how long the statements are, and what responses are (or aren’t) welcome. For example, if you are expressing wounds you are carrying from the relationship, you might want to limit each one to under 30 seconds, and limit the other person’s response to either remain silent, or to verbally reflect something simple, neutral, and supportive such as “I hear you.”

You might consider a process with them that has a few stations with mini alters that represent specific emotions. For example, anger (candles), sadness (water), numbness (rocks), hope (small plants), gratitude (flowers). During the process, you each take turns tracking your emotion, moving to the most applicable station, and expressing what is there.

If you are both participating in the divorce or breakup ritual, you can use important relationship dates, such as the anniversary of marriage, engagement, or your first date, or the Saturday after your divorce is finalized in court or your house sells,

The Reverse Ritual: “Untying the Knot”

One simple, yet profound way to plan and design your divorce ritual is to recall the details of your marriage ceremony, and follow a similar pattern with an opposite (reverse) or different intention. This releases the spiritual union, then reinforces each person’s love and strength unto themselves, their children (if any), and their community.

For example, you might invite some of the people who were at your wedding if you are still close. If you brought two candles together to light one candle, do the opposite. If you threw a bouquet, have your friends throw flower pedals at you. If you spoke vows, re-write and speak each one so that it is a vow towards yourself. If there was a significant wedding moment when you put on the ring, you might recreate a meaningful moment when you take the ring off.

Have fun creating a meaningful representation for each element of the marriage ceremony that feels empowering for your next, unmarried stage of your life.

Getting Support for your Divorce Ritual

If you are convinced that a divorce ritual or ceremony will aid in your healing and post-divorce transformation, yet feel overwhelmed about planning or implementing it, ask for support. You probably know friends, counselors, or religious leaders that can help. Ideally, it is somebody with experience with rituals. At Oregon Divorce Guides, we are happy to refer you to a ritualist who can help facilitate your divorce ritual.

Ideas for Divorce Rituals: Tips and Structure Guide