During bereavement, mourning rituals act as a support system, helping people cope better. According to Lucy Selman, an associate professor at the University of Bristol and founder of the Good Grief Festival, mourning externalizes grief and starts the healing process.
According to The Guardian, Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona and author of “The Grieving Brain,” supports mourning traditions.
When uncertain times arise, rituals can provide comfort and stability. Despite similar feelings and losses, people before us have lived meaningful lives despite them.
In the view of Selman, markers of grief such as armbands serve as indicators for others to respect and comfort grieving people.
Believe 30% of UK adults
Grief can also be easily ignored. 30% of UK adults believe others don’t mention their loss at all, according to a YouGov survey. Rituals of mourning can make it harder to ignore emotions.
According to O’Conner, grief expresses itself differently over time.”It’s not like grief has a beginning, middle and end,” she said. “There are all these different ways of dealing with loss that can be difficult to witness.” Rituals of mourning help people communicate their feelings, according to Selman. By symbolically showing others they’ve experienced a loss, they can more easily express themselves openly.
“Condolences on Twitter are no less meaningful than armbands,” she said. “People may have an emotional need to express themselves, but they also want to know that others are experiencing the same feelings,” Selman said. “The more people who talk about their grief on Twitter, the more likely it is that someone else will feel comfortable doing so.”
We should be more accepting of different customs and rituals as society becomes more diverse, according to Dr. Chao Fang, a research fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.
