Coming Home Together: What Ancient Rituals Teach Us About Modern Community

Across history, communities helped people come home from war.

Maybe the secret to modern healing isn’t in new systems, but in remembering old wisdom.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how different cultures have helped people come home after war, loss, or upheaval.

Because in our modern world, we often expect people to just get on with it, as if transition is a checkbox, a handover, a tidy ending.

But across history, coming home was never just about walking through your own front door.

It was a communal act.

And maybe that’s what we’ve lost, the togetherness part.

In many traditional societies, warriors didn’t return quietly or alone.

They were met, held, witnessed.

In some Indigenous communities, returning fighters were cleansed in sweat lodges or fire rituals the heat and smoke symbolically releasing what they had carried. The community would gather to listen, to honour, to share the burden of their stories.

In others, warriors bathed in rivers or sacred springs, washing away the energy of battle before rejoining their families. The idea wasn’t to erase what happened, but to transform it to mark that a crossing had taken place.

Among some African and Pacific Island cultures, returning soldiers were publicly welcomed back not only to celebrate bravery, but to reweave them into the social fabric. Storytelling, dancing, and shared meals reminded everyone that the person who fought was also a brother, father, friend, neighbour.

And in all of these, one thing stands out:

The return was shared.

It wasn’t a private process left to the individual or the family alone.

The whole community participated, helping the warrior to re-become part of the circle.

Compare that to what happens today.

We train people intensely to serve, but when service ends, there’s no mirrored ritual for return.

No cleansing. No witnessing. Just forms, briefings, and silence.

Families and loved ones are often left holding invisible weight, without the language or space to process it.

And this isn’t just a veterans’ issue.

It’s a community issue.

When we lose our collective rituals of return, we lose connection.

We start to believe that healing, resilience, and belonging are solo acts.

But they never were.

So perhaps rebuilding community cohesion isn’t only about civic projects or shared spaces, it’s about remembering how to meet people where they are.

How to hold space for what they bring back.

How to be each other’s witnesses again.

Because the truth is, we all return from something a loss, a burnout, a life transition, a change that leaves us different.

And in that way, we’re all learning how to come home together.

Maybe that’s the real work of our time:

To rebuild the village.

To remember that healing is relational.

To make community itself a kind of ritual of return.

This piece is part of The Aftershock Project, an ongoing exploration of what it mean to come home, from service, from trauma, from silence, and how communities can soften the landing for those who serve and those who love them.

Through story, science, and reflection, I’m learning, and inviting others to learn with me, how we might rebuild the village, one honest conversation at a time.