There is a tradition in my ancestral lands of Karelia known as the Weeping Women.

For generations, these women carried the wisdom of lamentation. They understood that tears were not something to suppress, but something sacred. Through voice, grief, song, prayer, and weeping, they helped communities move through death, separation, loss, and transformation.

The lament singer stood at the threshold between worlds.

She helped souls depart.

She helped the living remain.

She helped communities survive loss without becoming hardened by it.

When I think about this tradition, I often wonder if modern society has forgotten something essential.

We have become skilled at explaining grief.

But not necessarily at feeling it.

We analyze it.

Diagnose it.

Manage it.

Yet the old Karelian women understood something different.

Some experiences cannot be solved.

They must be sung.

Cried.

Prayed.

Lamented.

Only then can they become part of the larger river of life.

For a long time, I did not understand that this lineage lived within me.

My initiation came unexpectedly.

For nearly two and a half years, tears moved through me like a river that could not be stopped. Layer after layer surfaced. Personal grief. Ancestral grief. Collective grief. Sorrows I could name and sorrows that seemed older than memory itself.

At times it felt endless.

Looking back now, I understand that something was being opened.

The barriers to feeling were dissolving.

The floodgates needed to open before the river could find its natural course.

At first, the gift was simply the ability to feel.

To allow grief without turning away.

To remain present with sorrow without trying to fix it.

To let tears move through the body as a living force.

But over time, another gift emerged.

What began as grief slowly became transmutation.

Lamentation revealed itself not as an expression of suffering, but as a pathway through it.

I discovered that when grief is fully welcomed, it changes shape.

Tears become prayer.

Sorrow becomes beauty.

Loss becomes devotion.

What once felt heavy begins to move, and what moves can eventually return as wisdom, compassion, and deeper intimacy with life itself.

Today I no longer see my sensitivity as something to overcome.

I see it as one of my deepest gifts.

The ability to feel deeply is also the ability to love deeply, to listen deeply, and to accompany others into places that many have been taught to avoid.

And so I find myself filled with gratitude.

Gratitude for the women who carried this wisdom before me.

Gratitude for the river of tears that softened what needed softening.

Gratitude for the understanding that grief is not the opposite of love.

It is one of love’s most sacred expressions.

Perhaps the gift of the Weeping Women was never grief itself.

Perhaps their true gift was remembering how to transform grief into blessing.