We are entering this sacred time when the veils thin and we can honor and heal with our ancestors. A time to celebrate the memory of our loved ones, how they lived, what they loved, where they were hurt, and how they overcame. To remember what lives on in us. To cultivate the beauty, tenacity, strength, and release the pain and inter generational trauma. My culture does this so beautifully in the altares made with love and reverence. Marigolds to guide the ancestors to return. Tamales, dulce, pan de Muerto and favorite items placed for loved ones. We grieve and celebrate at the same time.
I love this because I often say that my religion is laughter and mortality. Mortality meaning that I am deeply aware of loss, having had life fall apart so many times in foster care, being separated from everyone as a small child, the death of my parents and foster parents, and having moved, displaced and starting over so many times. I literally never walk around in denial of mortality and loss. I am extremely aware of the tenuousness of our existence.
But I embrace loss because it has taught me to be in the moment, and remember what is most important. To live with, hopefully, less regrets. It shapes my living, my parenting, my counseling and homeschooling to be focused on connection and presence.
And in those moments I really like to laugh. Those who know me, often remark on my deep guttural laugh. As much as I’ve grieved and support other’s grief, I go for it when JOY presents itself. I milk it and let the laughter overcome me/us. In my retreats, we experience the way that facing and moving through our pain allows us to make room for deep joy and laughter. And it’s become a thing in our family where we like to keep a good laugh going and will try to just keep cracking ourselves up when the opportunity presents itself. Reveling in the expanse.
I laugh loud. It is my mothers laugh. I didn’t realize this until I was an adult. But now, when I laugh, I think of her and the legacy of her courage and tenacity that kept her laughing and busting out ballads even in the face of so much tragedy and heartbreak. She was utterly wounded by this life, but as I carry her laughter and tenacity, it can now live on through me, even more healed than it could in her. Her struggle was not in vain.
So I laugh now with the families. Families who’ve known loss just as keenly. Many of whom have endured the great losses of leaving parents, family, children, culture and country behind, simply to survive. And now have lost everything that they sacrificed and worked so hard for, for too many years.
After the grief, we laugh at whatever we can. Sometimes my Americanized Spanish, sometimes little scheduling mishaps, any little opportunity. Both tears and laughter discharge stress and trauma, so we ride whatever wave comes.
At a sweet gathering I hosted yesterday on supporting our children through grief/loss, we did the same. And we will continue. This culture/comunidad that has known pain, trauma, struggle, and can face it head on, also knows the healing power of joy, reverence, family, and the healing that comes with fiesta and communal practices of dance, music, song, cooking, tending, wailing, laughing. Honoring with reverence, curiosity and delight the way our lives are intertwined over years. Releasing control we don’t have and surrendering into the gift of each sacred moment.
Wishing you all the same.
Feliz Día de Los Muertos/All Souls time♥️