New Year’s Day Ritual

Ritual artifacts to float down the Detroit River

2025 was a tough one… it called for a “release ritual” to enter the new year with verve.

The premise: make little artifacts and boats to carry what needed to be released from 2025, take them to Belle Isle, and send them off into the Detroit River. I can’t take credit for this idea, but it was a brilliant one.

My ritual partner and I sat in my green Subaru Outback facing the snowy riverbank as we made our vessels, each in our own heads. There was so much I wanted to put into this little object, but so little space (mentally and physically). So I opted for a haiku, written inside the paper crane. Sometimes less is more. The poem references my cross-country drive just two months prior, moving from California where I had lived for the past 25 years, back to Michigan where I grew up.

In rearview mirrors,

Scenes fade into memories.

Ahead, roads beckon.

When it came time to put my boat into the water and let it go, I struggled—surprising for such a seemingly simple act. I felt worried, stressed, uncertain … On the surface, the inner dialogue circled around where to put it in, if it would get stuck, where it would go. But deep down I could feel a reluctance to say Good-Bye, even though this “thing” I was letting go of was causing me pain.

The culture I live in doesn’t have sufficient rituals to deal with grief and loss, especially when the “death” is not a literal one. But this simple act - setting an intention, making a symbolic artifact and container, reflecting during the making, feeling all the feelings, sharing the experience with another, and carving out space afterward to let the feelings resonate and settle - well, I highly recommend it.

Ultimately I set my boat free — along with some psychic stuff that was creating drag on my entry into 2026. Did it completely eliminate the pain? No, but it was a move in the right direction.

Photo Credit: Michael McGillis