I don’t know if I could have survived seven years of my childhood without the soul-saving rituals of my Persian culture. Perhaps with fewer opportunities for people to be in community, many shared cultural rituals are falling away and with them a grounding source for connection and mental health. So after 20 years of living in the U.S., I decided to create my own community rituals. Later, we built more community rituals into the week. From my experience in Iran, rituals can be particularly valuable during hard times.