What is it?

 

A Rite of Passage is a structured, ceremonial process that marks a significant transition in a person’s life—one that honors the death of an old identity and the conscious emergence of a new one.

 

It’s not just a symbolic act. A true Rite of Passage includes three core phases:

1. Severance: from an Old Self, Story or Way of living

2. Threshold: experience releasing and stepping into

3. Return: Integrate and embody new self and paradigm

 

Simply put, Rites of Passage (ROP) is an ancestral practice of releasing a Self or Story you've outgrown and now taking a conscious and felt shift of stepping into what's ready to be lived. 

 

Worldwide, Rites of Passage has always recognized this truth:

"We don’t heal by talking about it—we heal by walking through it."

 

They recgonized the need to ritualize it where they have a felt experience of releasing, integrating and becoming whole. 

 

For Example, after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, entire villages were submerged in silent trauma. Many women, especially those who’d experienced rape, were living with unimaginable pain locked inside them. Grief lived in the body.

Western therapists arrived, offering clinical sessions—closed rooms, isolated chairs, long talk.

But the villagers asked them to leave.

“That’s not how we heal,” one survivor said.
“We heal through sun, drum, dance, and community.”

 

A woman named Godelieve Mukasarasi began gathering women in open space. Not to speak—but to move, breathe, sing, and remember together.

She revived ancestral rites of grief and release.
And in doing so, she restored not just individuals, but a communal rhythm of healing.

 

 

Why ROP Matter Now:

In modern culture, many people drift through transitions without guidance. Divorce, career shifts, aging, loss, or inner transformation often go unwitnessed and unritualized. The soul gets stuck in the in-between.

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Rites of Passage give sacred form to life’s turning points—so that you don’t just survive change…
You become through it.

 

"This experience has provided more for me then 10 years of therapy! I feel brand new and whole.  I can't thank you enough." 

~ Sandra K Tacoma WA

 

 

 

The Experience

 

Rites of Passage isn't a course or a program. It's not Therapy or coaching. 

 

This is a journey into yourself.  You meet what's unfinished.  You lay down the weight you didn't know you were still carrying.  You learn not about your story, but from it. 

 

You are met exactly where you are.  We walk with what's alive in you... gently, honestly and without rushing it.. 

 

 

 

Meets You Where You Are:

Rites of Passage happens when you're ready. It doeesn't force you into healing or greeting what you're not ready for.  It meets you at your threshold and invites you to take a step just past it where the true healing takes place. 

 

We meeet you where you are, what you're ready to lean into and how you're willing to engage, move, and step through. 

 

What We Do:

Every Rites of Passage is personal. We provide an ancestral frame that guides you.  We help you identify what's ready to release and what you're ready to step into without the past influence.  We customize your journey to help you do so. 

 

We use the tools of:

• Story + Symbol – To uncover the deeper meaning of what you’ve lived

• Ritual + Land – To mark the moment in your body and bones

• Integration + Practice – So you return with clarity, not confusion

 

There's an old knowledge that says:

 "You can't enter a world where you don't know its language."

 

Rites of Passage is as symbolic as it is practical result based transformation.  It's the symbolic nature of it that provides such deep healing and transformation. These kinds of journeys have their own language, their own symbology and mythic motifs that draw out the hidden layers, meanings, and reasons. 

 

We help you learn the language, the symbology and how to engage on a deeper level. 

 

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Why People Choose This Work

“This gave me more than 10 years of therapy.”
~ Sandra K., Tacoma, WA

 

This work isn’t for everyone.
It’s for those who feel the ache of incompletion.
The grief that didn’t move.
The identity that never came all the way home.
The hunger for a way of healing that feels… older than words.

You don’t have to explain why you’re still carrying it.
You just have to be ready to lay it down.