This presentation focuses on women’s intimate embodied rituals associated with a loss (e.g., death of a loved one, end of a partnership, loss of an unborn child, or even letting go of an old self). Based on Estonian ethnographic material from the 19th to the 21st century, the presentation will describe and investigate elements of such rituals that usually consist of a multisensory contact-making with the bereaved individual that is perceived as necessary for processing grief and giving relationships and/or memories a transformed form that enables a certain detachment from these before one can re-integrate into normal everyday life. Parallels between historical material and contemporary ritual experiences will be given, to analyze changes of goals and expressions related to such mourning-related embodied rituals over time. The presentation exemplifies that similar dynamics can be observed, for example, in relation to funeral laments sung by women in the 19th century, finishing a co-dependent relationship with a violent husband in the 20th century, or mourning an unborn baby via digital platforms in the 21st century. Such detachment through embodiment becomes possible through the paradoxical nature of embodied rituals that “embody a present absence, a present past, and an active incongruity, understood primarily not through the mind but through the body“ (Håland 2019: 66).
