Sankirtan: Collective Witnessing of Grief

Sankirtan is the bhakti practice of collective devotional singing—a group creating meaning and experience together. Mirabai's poetry was meant to be sung, shared, and inhabited by communities. This practice suggests that grief is not necessarily a private interior event. Sharing your work—your songs, your words, your art—with others transforms the emotional landscape. When someone hears your grief articulated and recognizes their own, isolation dissolves. Sankirtan teaches that your particular loss carries universal resonance. The death you grieve, the dream you lost, the life you didn't get to live—others carry versions of these. By making your grief public through art, you create permission and space for others to acknowledge theirs. This isn't therapy in the clinical sense; it's the ancient human practice of turning private anguish into shared song. For grieving creators, sankirtan suggests that your work serves others even as it serves you. The art you make doesn't exist only to process your loss; it exists to say to others: you are not alone in this.