Honoring Traditions & Milestones: It Matters More Than Ever

There’s something quietly sacred about transitions, those moments in life when something ends and something new begins. Whether it’s a graduation, a job change, a wedding, a move, or even the loss of something once important, transitions shape us. They’re not just events; they’re thresholds that ask us to pause, reflect, and feel.

Throughout history, humans have instinctively understood the power of marking these thresholds. In nearly every culture and religious tradition, rituals and ceremonies were designed to hold space for change—welcoming babies, blessing unions, mourning losses, celebrating rites of passage. Communities gathered in churches, temples, town halls, and living rooms. Volunteer groups, service organizations, and extended families provided the scaffolding for people to be seen, honored, and supported through life’s many chapters.

But in recent decades, many of these institutions have shrunk in influence or disappeared altogether. Participation in religious services, civic groups, and social clubs has declined significantly in the U.S. and many other Western countries. We’ve become more mobile, more digital, more individualistic. And as those communal touchstones have faded, we’ve lost many of the built-in rituals that once helped us process life’s transitions.

Research supports what ancient traditions always knew: recognizing milestones and transitions is vital for mental health. Psychologists have found that ritual and ceremony help people manage anxiety, build resilience, and feel a sense of continuity in the midst of change. In fact, a new study found that individuals who marked life transitions with ritual—formal or informal—experienced greater emotional clarity and well-being than those who did not.

These rituals give us permission to feel, to grieve, to celebrate, and to integrate the significance of change. They say, "This mattered. You mattered."

Part of honoring a milestone means allowing all the feelings that come with it, not just the shiny or expected ones. I still remember the day I came home from work after finishing graduate school. I had passed my classes and completed my internship. It should have been a moment of joy and pride.

But I stood in the doorway and cried.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t have an article to read or a paper to write or a project deadline looming. I had been so accustomed to chasing a task that I didn’t know how to just be. In that stillness, I felt lost. I also felt stupid and ungrateful—because I should have been happy. And I was happy. But I was also sad. I was grieving the structure, the meaning, and the social connection that school had given my life.

Only when I gave myself permission to feel all of it, joy, grief, fear, even confusion, did I start to find my footing again. As Brené Brown wrote, “We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” She emphasizes that we can’t just push through or “get over” feelings, we have to work through them. That’s how we find our way to the other side.

This is why recognizing transitions is so much more than a checkbox or a party. It’s a process. It’s a reckoning with who we were, who we’re becoming, and what we’re leaving behind. To honor a milestone is to be fully present with all the beautiful, contradictory, aching complexity of being human.

So whatever transition you're in, big or small, take the time to acknowledge it. Light a candle, journal, cry, dance, pray, call a friend, plant something. Whatever your version of ritual looks like, let it be real. Let it be felt.

What’s a transition or milestone you’ve gone through recently? How did it really feel?

Leave a comment below, or click here to learn more about Leah and Sage Behavioral Health.

1. Hobson, J. A., et al. (2013). The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process model. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 8, 505–516.

   
   

2. Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection.

Reasons to Honor and Celebrate Traditions & Milestones