Sometimes we don't realize how far we've drifted from ourselves until something brings us back.
I've been doing rituals since I was young. They've always been part of my spiritual life — a way for me to connect, listen, pray, and build a deeper relationship with what's unseen. Ritual was never strange to me. It was just part of how I lived my spirituality.
But for many years, I thought of ritual mainly as a spiritual practice. Something I did to create a sacred moment, connect with myself, or work through something I was going through. I didn't yet understand how deeply ritual could become part of everyday life, or how it could bring us back to parts of ourselves we didn't even realize we'd left behind.
I started to understand this differently after my father passed away.
When Life Keeps Moving
After my father died, life didn't stop.
There was grief, of course, but there were also kids who still needed to get to school, meals that still needed to be made, schedules that still needed managing, and a family that still needed me. I was also holding space for my mother and trying to be there for the people around me while going through my own loss.
In a lot of ways, I managed.
I kept up my spiritual practice. I did grief rituals. I worked with different spiritual tools to find emotional balance. I meditated, reflected, prayed, and did what I knew how to do. I kept up my daily life and my kids' schedules. From the outside, I was getting through everything that needed to be done.
And maybe that's why I didn't notice something inside me had quietly changed.
I thought I was okay.
I thought I was content.
I had learned how to hold myself through hard moments, and I was grateful I could keep showing up for the people I loved. I didn't feel like I was falling apart. I wasn't looking for something to fix.
I just kept going.
The Ritual I Didn't Know I Needed
Then, one day, a spiritual friend came to town and hosted an abundance ritual.
I went without expecting anything in particular. I wasn't looking for healing. I didn't think anything was missing. Honestly, I think I went mostly to have fun, spend time with a friend, and enjoy the ritual itself.
I had no idea what was waiting for me.
After the ritual, something opened up.
The tears came, but what surprised me most was that they weren't only grief. They weren't just the emotions I'd been holding since losing my father, though I'm sure some of that was there too. What surprised me was the happiness.
It hit me so strongly I almost didn't know what to do with it.
I realized that somewhere along the way, I had gotten really good at being content. I had learned how to accept life, hold my family together, keep up my practices, and keep moving. But I had forgotten something simple.
I had forgotten what it felt like to be deeply happy just to be alive.
I hadn't realized I'd been living at the edge of happiness instead of fully letting myself feel it.
And that hit me harder than I expected.
What We Don't Know We've Lost
I think this is one of the quiet things that can happen in life.
We don't always lose ourselves in a dramatic way.
Sometimes we lose a little of ourselves through responsibility. Through grief. Through motherhood. Through being needed. Through trying to hold everything together. Through getting really good at coping.
We keep waking up. We keep doing what needs to be done. We keep loving our families. We keep showing up.
And because life is running smoothly, we assume we're fine.
But functioning and feeling fully alive aren't always the same thing.
Sometimes there's a part of us that has gone quiet. Our joy. Our playfulness. Our sensuality. Our curiosity. Our excitement. Our ability to simply enjoy being here without needing a reason.
We might not even notice it's missing until something gives it permission to come back.
For me, that was ritual.
Not because the ritual gave me something I didn't already have, but because it made space for something inside me to come forward again.
Ritual Is More Than a Spiritual Practice
This experience changed the way I see ritual.
I used to think of ritual as something I did when I wanted to connect spiritually or work through something specific. Now I see it as something much more personal. Ritual can become a way of making space for ourselves in the middle of ordinary life.
It doesn't have to be complicated.
It can be how we start our morning before the world starts asking things of us. It can be lighting a candle at the end of the day. Taking a bath without rushing. Sitting quietly with a cup of tea. Putting oil on our skin and breathing in the scent. Writing down what we're feeling. Listening to music that brings something alive in us. Closing our eyes for a few moments and letting ourselves feel what's actually here.
The ritual itself isn't the magic.
It's the space we create through it.
We're saying, even if only for a few minutes, I am here.
I am not rushing through this moment.
I am not only a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, or someone taking care of everyone else.
I am also here.
And I am worth being present with.
Creating a Place to Return To
This is why I believe spiritual practice matters so much in everyday life.
We often think we need a spiritual practice only when something hard happens — when we're grieving, when we're lost, when life becomes uncertain.
But maybe the deeper reason is to build a relationship with ourselves before those moments arrive.
Because life will always bring us things we can't control.
There will be loss. There will be uncertainty. There will be days when the people we love need more from us than we feel able to give. There will be seasons when we carry more than we expected.
We can't always change what's happening around us.
But we can create somewhere inside ourselves to return to.
Over time, those small moments become familiar. We learn what brings us back. We learn how to get quiet enough to hear ourselves again. We learn the difference between being tired and being disconnected, between needing rest and needing to feel, between being content and being truly alive.
And sometimes we discover what we need isn't another answer.
It's space.
Let Yourself Feel More Than What's Necessary
What stays with me most from that abundance ritual is that I thought I was content.
I wasn't unhappy. I wasn't desperately searching for anything. I was simply living.
And yet, underneath that contentment was a part of me ready to feel more.
More joy.
More aliveness.
More of the simple happiness of being here.
That experience reminded me we don't have to wait until something's wrong before we create a ritual. We don't have to wait until we're exhausted, grieving, or overwhelmed before we turn inward.
We can create these moments because life is beautiful too.
We can create space to receive joy before we need it.
We can create space to listen before we're lost.
We can create space to feel before our emotions get too heavy to ignore.
Maybe this is what returning to ourselves really means.
Not becoming someone new.
Not fixing everything that feels hard.
Not escaping the life we have.
Simply making enough space to notice who's still here.
A Way Back to Yourself
I still believe deeply in the power of spiritual practice, but I no longer see ritual as separate from everyday life.
It can be woven into the smallest moments.
It can become how we move from one part of the day to another. How we care for our emotional world. How we honor our body. How we create stillness when everything around us is moving.
And maybe, over time, these small rituals become something more than practices.
They become a way home.
Because we'll all have moments when we lose touch with ourselves. Sometimes through grief. Sometimes through responsibility. Sometimes just because life gets busy and we forget to pause.
We don't need to judge ourselves for that.
We just need to remember the way back.
For me, ritual has become one of those ways.
A moment to stop.
A moment to breathe.
A moment to listen.
A moment to feel.
And sometimes, if we're willing to stay there long enough, we might discover something we didn't even know we'd been missing.
Not another answer.
Not another version of ourselves.
But maybe a little more of the joy, love, and light that was already here.
Sometimes coming back to yourself isn't about finding something new. It's about making enough space for what has always been inside you to be felt again.