Re-Membering: What the Rainforest Revealed About Grief

Recently I returned to Chaa Creek in Belize where we’d just hosted our Sacred Journey With Grief Retreat only a month before. I felt called back, perhaps even guided by Graham when the flight on his birthday was inexplicably half the price of all others within weeks.

I was thrilled to be invited back by my dear friend Bryony, daughter of Chaa Creek’s founders and now its managing director. We’d met in the ’90s when she was my student at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Louisiana—one of those who captures your heart instantly and stays with you forever. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to visit Chaa Creek many times, often as a guest of Bryony and her husband Emil.

This time, I was invited to stay in “Lucy’s Bus,” a converted school bus turned modern-day camper. Lucy—Bryony’s mother—had written her book there, and I loved the idea of soaking in some of that creative energy as I worked on my own.

Lucy’s Bus, with all the modern comforts I could ask for, was thoughtfully adorned with fresh flowers and even angelic figurines hanging from the curtains. Love and care were felt in every detail, so typical of Bryony, her Chaa Creek family, and the Belizean people.

I was ready to return—not simply to remember our Sacred Journey With Grief, not just to revisit it through thought—but to Re-Member. To gather every fragment of the experience back into myself. To re-enter the space where profound shifts had occurred. To integrate what was opened, felt, and revealed.

Because to Re-Member is not to look back—it is more like coming home. To reconnect with something deeper that has always lived within. Each participant and my fellow guides had offered profound blessing. I wanted to embody it, let it settle into my cells, to breathe through the very pores of my spirit, to become not a memory, but a living truth.

I began the days retracing familiar steps—hiking the rainforest trail back to camp, where we had gathered each day. Francellia and Dolcio, who had cared for us like family through their rich Belizean cooking, greeted me with warm surprise.

I’m not sure if it was the fresh rain, or my deeper presence, but the forest felt even more alive—the scent of blooming flora almost intoxicating. It turns out that mango blossoms are as fragrant and generous as the fruit they become.

The room where we gathered each day felt different now yet still held its quiet beauty. I returned to the same circle, seeing our co-created altar in my mind’s eye, softly greeting our intentions and the loved ones we had honored there before.

I practiced yoga, guided by Jess through an online class, in the same space outside, this time solely to the music of the tropical birds.

I reflected on the transformations we’d witnessed—the radiant shift in our attendees’ faces during the ceremonies and FADC sessions. I wondered if I was imagining it. But at a Mayan Spring Solstice gathering Friday evening, where we offered copal to release what no longer serves us and set intentions for the year, my thoughts were affirmed. Dr. Rosita, who co-facilitated the event and led a spiritual bathing ceremony with our group, shared the same observation. “I saw golden auras surrounding the women after the ceremony,” she said to me.

Life experiences—especially grief can leave us in pieces—shattered, disoriented, unsure of who we are.

The purpose of our retreat was to gently tend to that fragmentation—emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and within the body—guiding us back into connection with our own soul essence and the deeper consciousness within us all. Through ceremony, guided meditations, and yoga it happened.

Not by bypassing grief, but by moving through it. Because within the depth of heartbreak is love.

As I hiked the rainforest daily, I couldn’t help but be struck by its quiet symbiosis. Everything living in relationship—in effortless cooperation and exchange. The flowers offer nectar. Hummingbirds carry it forward. Vines climb trees without destroying them. Fissures in limestone bedrock cradle new ferns. The gumbo limbo’s bark gently peels away revealing the tender skin beneath. Even fallen trees whose entire root system appears to be exposed are still holding tight to the earth, gently resting while some branches reach to the light.

Even decay is part of this sacred relationship. Fallen leaves, broken branches, and passing life forms are not endings, but offerings—returned to the earth to nourish what comes next, or cradling new growth.

In that landscape, something within me began to mirror what I was witnessing. The rainforest teaches that transformation calls us to participate in a continuous cycle of renewal. And isn’t that the challenge in grief?

These relationships reminded me that we, too, are part of this web. Our thoughts, actions, and presence ripple outward. Giving and receiving are the same act-- exactly what we witnessed with our retreat participants. Surviving—and surviving grief—is a collective, not solitary, experience.

As I Re-membered, I noticed something I hadn’t before. The plant I had watered in ceremony-- with water containing Graham’s cremains--was springing forth from a lifeless decayed stump. Something vibrant was rising from death. At first, I had only seen the life. In that moment, I saw the truth beneath it.

This--I realized--is the hidden gift of grief. This is the lesson of the rainforest. Life supporting life in an unbroken web. Even death—or life in spirit—becomes a source of renewal given time, patience, and care.

Nothing in the rainforest resists this cycle. And I am learning not to resist it either.

If you are grieving the loss of a loved one—or holding the heaviness of an unresolved challenge, which can carry its own weight—this is my prayer for you:

May what has fallen in your life reveal itself as offering.

May you be held in the care, patience, and time your spirit longs for.

May the sacred exchange of life—this quiet symbiosis—bring you renewal.

In the end, nothing is wasted. Not even grief.