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Last year a close family friend died suddenly from a massive stroke. Killian had always been like a member of the family, a dear friend of my parents who had been a part of my growing up. I felt devastated when my mother told me he had died but was baffled by the depth of my grief until I realized that he had been like a second father to me. My grief deepened when I recognized that I could never tell him that realization in person, and thank him.

I took my grief and regret into the labyrinth. As I walked back and forth in the circuits on my way to the center, I relived memories of him chasing me and his daughters in childhood games. I heard his growly laugh and saw him beaming at me at my wedding. When I got to the center, I told him how much he had meant to me and cried. I told him how sorry I was that I had never thanked him for being in my life.

In the midst of the tears I felt my heart opening to an unexpected wave of gratitude for the gift of his presence throughout my life. It was as if I could hear him harrumphing in acknowledgment and acceptance of my love and gratitude. The tears ended and I walked out feeling profoundly grateful for his gruffness, his stability, his caring. Walking the labyrinth didn’t “cure” my grief, but it allowed me to work with it in a powerful way. The labyrinth helped pull me out of regret and into gratitude for Killian’s life and all he gave me.

You might find that walking the labyrinth unexpectedly brings up old residues of grief in order to be worked with and ultimately healed, as it did for Sig Lonegren, author of Labyrinths: Ancient Myths and Modern Uses. One year after his mother’s death he traveled with a group to Chartres Cathedral in France. Other group members included a family consisting of an older woman whose first husband had died, her new husband, and her three grown children.

While Lonegren was walking the labyrinth at Chartres one evening, he recalled, “I began naming members of my own family; it was like I was doing a prayer for each one of them, totally unplanned. I looked into the center of the labyrinth and there was that woman on her knees bowing toward the altar with her kids gathering around crying for their dad, of course. All of a sudden she was my mother: She was about the size of my mom and the color of her hair was like my mom’s when she passed on. She became my mother. Her family suddenly became my family.

“It was an incredible release for me, a radically powerful experience. I was so touched that I sent my whole family a letter about what happened. Grief is so powerful. You think you’ve gotten over the loss, and three months later you’re getting over it again. This walk was one of those very important ‘getting over it’ stages for me: thinking about my family, and saying their names, and praying for each one of them, and then seeing this woman become my mother in the center. It was a very powerful integration of my feelings about my mom and her death and all that meant for me.”

Another way to open compassionately to your own grief is to imagine the labyrinth as the Open Heart of Spirit. Walk into this Open Heart; allow it to comfort you and surround you as you walk into its depths and graces. When you reach the center, listen to what this Open Heart has to say to you, teach you, comfort you.

I once had a client who was grieving the loss of her best friend due to an unfortunate misunderstanding. Her favorite way to walk the labyrinth was to imagine the labyrinth as her own heart and to walk slowly into it. “I’ve spent my whole life with plenty of room for everyone else, but no room for me, in my own heart. It’s so hard sometimes to be compassionate toward myself, especially when I’m in pain. So when I imagine the labyrinth as my own heart, and walk into it and spend time at the center, I can know that there’s plenty of space there for me, and I can soften toward my own life. And that changes everything, even the pain of the loss.”

FEAR

Fear can be a great paralyzer. I can be gripped by fear—whether of the future,