Why Rites of Passage Still Matter
As a culture, we have gotten pretty good at celebrating milestones. Birthday parties. Graduations. Promotions. Retirement dinners.
We know how to acknowledge a moment on the calendar. What we have forgotten is how to honor the human being inside the change.
Because milestones and transitions are not the same.
A milestone is something that happens to you. A transition is something that happens through you.
And in the modern world, most people have no idea how to navigate that deeper passage. No one teaches us how to cross the invisible threshold between who we were and who we are becoming.
Our ancestors knew this space was sacred. We have all but forgotten.
The Lost Art of Crossing Thresholds
For thousands of years, rites of passage were woven into the fabric of human life. They were how individuals and communities made meaning from change.
When someone stepped into adulthood or parenthood, when grief arrived, when an identity ended and a new one began, there was structure and ceremony. There were elders and witnesses.
People did not walk through change alone. They walked through it held.
There was always someone there to say:
“You are no longer who you were.
Step forward.
We see you.”
Contrast that with today.
We switch careers and update LinkedIn. We become parents and post photos. We lose someone and return to work after three days. We sell companies and wake up the next morning wondering who we are now.
Our bodies have changed. Our stories have changed. Our hearts have changed.
But because nothing marked the transformation, we do not feel transformed.
This is why transitions feel incomplete. This is why grief lingers. This is why success feels empty. This is why so many people achieve everything they wanted yet feel lost.
It is not because something is wrong with them. It is because they were never guided across the threshold.
Rites of Passage: The Architecture of Change
A rite of passage gives shape to the shapeless, meaning to the mysterious, and dignity to the difficult. It provides a container for transformation so the soul does not have to navigate change alone.
Across cultures, every rite of passage carries three stages.
1. Severance: Letting Go of Who You Were
This is the moment the old story loosens its grip. Not because it was wrong, but because it is complete.
This phase requires honesty, courage, grief, and the willingness to say, “I cannot keep living from this version of myself.”
2. Threshold: The In-Between
This is the sacred space between identities, the place that is nowhere and not yet. It is the time alone in the canyon, the silent walk into the mountains, the fast, the stillness, the unknown.
It is the part modern society rushes us through, but it is the part that actually changes us.
In the threshold, you do not force answers. You let truth find you.
3. Incorporation: Returning With Medicine
This is the return to your people with the wisdom you found in the silence. It is the moment you say, “Here is what I learned. Here is who I am now. Here is how I am going to live.”
Without this step, we return to our lives unchanged and unrecognized. With it, the transformation becomes real.
Without These Stages, Change Happens To Us Instead of Through Us
This is why people get stuck. Not because they lack discipline or clarity, but because they were never initiated into the new chapter.
I work with founders who sold companies and lost their identity. Leaders who built entire careers on values that were never truly theirs. Parents who stepped into a new role without crossing the inner threshold. High performers who realize they have been living someone else’s definition of success. Men and women who can feel a chapter ending but have no container to support what wants to emerge.
They are not broken. They are in transition.
But because they navigate that transition alone, without ritual or reflection or witnesses, the transformation never fully lands.
Why Rites of Passage Still Matter
We do not need more milestones. We need more meaning.
We need modern rites of passage that help people stop, listen, let go, cross the threshold, and return changed.
This is the work of the Vision Quest. This is why nature, silence, and solitude are so powerful. They bring us back into contact with truths that cannot be accessed in ordinary life.
And when we return witnessed, seen, and named, we step into life differently.
What Transition Are You In?
Every one of us is somewhere in the cycle of transformation.
Something ending.
Something beginning.
Something calling.
Something dissolving.
Something waiting to be born.
The question is simple:
Has it been witnessed?
Has it been honored?
Have you crossed the threshold, or are you still standing at its edge?
If you are in the middle of a transition that has not been marked or supported, it is not too late. Transformation is still possible. Your next chapter may be waiting for a rite of passage.