A Heavy Load to Carry

The impact of individual grief on the collective

May 30, 2025

This famous sculpture was created by the US sculptor and artist Celeste Roberge in 1998, and has become a symbol for many about the heavy weight of carrying grief. The image is of a figure bent over double and full of rocks, like a dead weight. As with all art so much is about interpretation and perspective. So, what I see and feel as I look at this sculpture, might not be what you see and feel, nor even what the artist intended. That’s the multi layered beauty of art.

For me, I see a figure being brought to their knees. Like the weight of grief they are carrying, as represented by the stones, is simply too great a burden to bear alone. I see this image as a form of Divine intervention, as the grief filled person is brought to their knees by Loss. So prayer becomes the inevitable next step. Finally they find themselves surrendering to a higher power, as they fall back to the Earth and in turn towards their version of ‘God’.

“Most people can’t see God because they don’t look low enough” Carl Jung

I love how in this sculpture the face is looking down towards the earth, which is a wisdom that only a grieving person comes to fully understand. That when overflowing with emotional pain, we must return to the land in order to truly grieve. That it is the Earth herself that will hold us in her loving embrace as we fall to our knees, and support us as we begin to soften, open, bleed and ultimately get back up. Because the two go hand in hand you see. Nature and grief, grief and nature. Like long lost lovers who find their way back to each other through the portal of loss.

This sculpture also reminds me of my first experience of prayer, when my mother was dying and I found myself alone in a church, filled with my own body of rocks. How, a quiet voice whispered to me ‘Get down on your knees’, and although I was confused and tried to resist, I felt an invisible force guided me down and into prayer. I have been imperfectly praying ever since.

“Maybe your prayers won’t save their life….perhaps it is not yours to save. But what if your prayers mean they suffer a little less, and taste true Love as they leave this earth? Surely that alone is worth falling to your knees for?!”

Donna Lancaster

The Soul doesn’t run….

So often we (the ego) desires a timeline for our grief. How long will this pain last?! When will it ever end?! And understandably so. No one enjoys being full of rocks. However, the Soul itself understands that grieving is a sacred act that can’t be rushed, and knows what is possible when we allow our grief to be fully metabolised. As I always say, grief and grieving are two very different things. Grief is a natural emotional reaction to any kind of significant loss and we all experience it. Grieving however is an active process and one that we are not generally taught how to do. Therefore, we all carry grief but not everyone grieves, and this is how so many people get stuck inside their grief. It becomes a place that they reside in. Like a ‘living’ memorial to honour whatever or whomever they have lost. Some will carry those rocks around their whole life because they have no clue how to release them. Others refuse to let even one single rock go, out of some misguided loyalty to who or what they have lost. But it really doesn’t have to be this way, because this is no way to live or to honour who or what has been lost. Instead, the ungrieved, are in danger of becoming ‘the living dead’. What a tragic waste.

“When death comes for you, make sure it finds you still alive.” African proverb

From individual to collective grief

What many people also don’t realise is how their unprocessed individual grief can also contribute to the collective. How if we do not turn towards those rocks inside of us and tend to the grief they represent, we will either become broken by them and ‘die before dying’, or we must find another way to alleviate the pain we feel from carrying them. And what this means for many, is they will start to throw their stones. Yes, they pull out some of the rocks they are carrying and throw them at a target of their choice known as ‘the others’. This is how wars begin. I have said it before that I believe that the root cause of all war, both inner and outer, is unprocessed grief. Because as one person flings their grief stones, another will retaliate, and before we know it a whole community, country or world is at war, led by the ‘half-hearted’ that crawl amongst us.

So, to work with our own grief, is to lay down our rocks. To return to our hearts and in doing so, to dare to live and Love again, whilst making those we have lost, so proud of us. Yes, to grieve is to become an inner activist. An agent of change. A peace maker.

“In a world full of pleasure seekers and escape exits, grieving is one of the most courageous and truthful acts you will ever undertake.”

Donna Lancaster

And finally….from the artist’s perspective

What I found so beautiful as I read up about the stone sculpture is that the artist, Celeste Roberge, intended for the piece to represent a kind of rising up rather than falling down. Hence the name ‘Rising Cairn’. “I imagine her in the process of rising up from her crouching position…when she is ready”, said Roberge. And for me that is what grieving allows us all to do. Ultimately to rise up and live and Love from a higher state of consciousness, than the place we used to reside in before our heart was broken open. That we allow our sacred grief to change and transform us, and in doing so, the whole world. One healing heart at a time….

This is my wish, my hope and my prayer…..and so it is.

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A Pilgrimage for the Soul

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