Some desires don’t make sense. They don’t seem to align with business plans or practical outcomes. They arrive as quiet nudges, asking you to pick up what’s right in front of you, to follow what feels alive in your hands and heart.
That’s how my guest, Day Schildkret, began what would eventually grow into an internationally recognized art form, two bestselling books, a thriving school with hundreds of graduates, and a business that employs more than a dozen people.
But it didn’t begin with strategy or spreadsheets.
It began with grief.
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Here’s some of what we explore in our conversation:
- How a daily practice of arranging natural objects helped Day metabolize grief and sparked a worldwide movement.
- Why Morning Altars blend nature, art, and ritual to create containers for grief, gratitude, and change.
- The real challenges of scaling soul-led work — protecting the spirit of your creative practice while building a business.
- Practical ritual ideas and micro-practices you can try to mark time, return to presence, and tend to loss.
- Day’s invitation to live “at the edge,” embracing uncertainty, curiosity, and the seasonal rhythms of practice.
A Story of Transforming Grief Through Ritual, Nature and Impermanent Art
“What began as a ritual of survival became a movement of healing.” – Day Schildkret
After losing both his father and a long-term relationship in 2011, Day found himself unable to move through the heaviness of daily life. It was his father’s dog, Rudy, who pulled him out of the house and into the hills near his home.
One day, sitting beneath a eucalyptus tree, he noticed mushrooms and bark scattered across the ground. Like a child at play, he began arranging them. Time disappeared.
For the first time in months, his grief felt lighter, like it was being metabolized into beauty.
He returned the next day, and the next, creating impermanent pieces of art from natural objects.
What began as a personal ritual of survival became a movement. People across the world saw his work on social media and began making their own “morning altars” — expressions of love, grief, and celebration created with the land.
One woman in England, grieving her mother for ten years, wrote to Day after creating her own altar with pinecones and moss: “It was the first time I felt close to her again, as if we were speaking.”
This was the seed of something far bigger than Day imagined: a practice that merged art, ritual, and nature into a healing response to the changes of life.
The Birth of an Improbable Business Around Impermanent Art & Ritual
Today, Morning Altars has blossomed into a global movement, two bestselling books (Morning Altars and Hello, Goodbye), and a practitioner training program that now has more than 400 graduates across 14 countries.
What I find most inspiring about Day’s story is that none of this would have happened if he had dismissed the strange, improbable pull to arrange mushrooms and bark in a park. By following what didn’t “make sense,” he created something of immense meaning — and eventually, even a profitable business.
And woven through his story is another gift: a reminder of ritual as a way to return.
Day teaches that returning — to ourselves, to presence, to what matters — is not about perfection but about remembering. Forgetting and getting lost is human. The question is whether we have practices, rituals, or mechanisms that bring us back.
“We don’t need to shame ourselves for leaving. The beauty of ritual is that it helps us return, again and again.” – Day Schildkret
In a culture obsessed with productivity, achievement, and speed, Day’s story is an invitation to slow down, trust the nudges, let grief and desire speak through your hands. You never know where it will lead.
“Our job as artists, entrepreneurs, and humans is to meet limits creatively. To reinvent them.” – Day Schildkret
About Day Schildkret, Author, Artist & Teacher
Day Schildkret is an award-winning queer author, artist, ritualist, teacher and is internationally known for Morning Altars, which BuzzFeed calls, “a celebration of nature and life.” With nearly 100k followers on social media, Day has worked for close to two decades with thousands of individuals, communities and organizations to help heal the culture through a meaningful and creative response to marking personal and collective change.
Day is the author of Hello, Goodbye: 75 Rituals for Times of Loss, Celebration and Change which hit Amazon’s #1 book in three categories, as well as, Morning Altars: A 7-Step Practice to Nourish Your Spirit through Nature, Art and Ritual. He is also the founder and principal instructor of the Morning Altars Practitioner & Teacher Training.
Connect with Day
Author website: https://dayschildkret.com
Morning Altars: https://morningaltars.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morningaltars
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morningaltars
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