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As Dias de los Muertos approaches, or All Soul’s Day, I'm delighted to have blogger Kara Jones from Mother Henna with us to talk to us about creative ways to address and honor our grief.
Halloween and Samhain are just the beginning of a long series of holidays stretching through to the New Year. For those of us who have experienced a loss, recent or otherwise, the holidays can be a difficult time. That’s why those rare but important ceremonies memorializing our loved ones, or helping us acknowledge the holidays in way that truly reflect our genuine emotional state, are such a treasure.
From colorful celebrations like Dia de los Muertos to more solemn ceremonies like a Blue Christmas mass, Kara has gathered an impressive list of resources to help you or someone you love navigate the difficult waters of the holiday season.
In my work as a pastor, and later as a soulcare specialist, I found that those who are experiencing grief are severely underserved. So please, pass this resource around. The world needs people like Kara who know Good Griefgood grief.
8 Creative Approaches to Grief:
creating new traditions for the holidaze
with Kara LC Jones
When talking with people about grief & creativity, I often hear things like, “I’m just not very creative” or “I’m not really an artist.” The thing about learning to live life after loss is that creativity becomes an every day practice, not just an artistic endeavor. It’s not always about writing poetry or drawing or painting. When someone is overwhelmed by grief and goes to the ocean to throw rocks as a way to express anger, they are being creative. When someone chooses to pay for the coffee of the person behind them, leaving a Kindness Card for the person, they are being creative.
So at this time of year, when the holidays might end up seeming like a holidaze for bereaved people, I thought it might be helpful to offer 8 seasonal ideas for practicing your creative approach to living life after loss.
1) Remembrance Day and Month
The month of October and particularly October 15th are Pregnancy Loss, Infant & Child Death Awareness times. Just know that if the death of a child is what has you in a holidaze, you are not alone. Take a moment each day to light a candle. Spend a few silent moments honoring your love for that child. Grief cannot take away your love.
2) Day of the Dead. The month of October is also preparation and lead up to Days of the Dead. October 31st is sometimes thought of as the day of the innocents, honoring the children who have died first. Then November 1 and 2 are honoring anyone who has died, who you wish to honor. There is a long history and cultural context to these traditions, and rituals often vary depending on the particular community in which you celebrate. But most all include making, decorating, and displaying of sugar skulls. We host a day every October for people to come to our home, make & decorate sugar skulls, and then place them on our community ofrenda or take home for their personal altars. We pass the bucket on these days, too, and any proceeds raised go to the local Food Bank in honor of all those we are remembering.
3) Giving Thanks. While many of would say we feel no thanks at all for the grief that has visited upon us, we can choose at some point to begin paying Kindnesses forward in the name of the person who died, in honor of the love we still feel for them. One wonderful way to “allow your loved one to touch the world” is through the Kindness Project over at the MISS Foundation. You basically do a kindness for someone and leave a card for them that says, “This random act of kindness was done in memory and honor of (fill in the name here.” We’ve heard of amazing and creative stories thru this project over the years.
4) Children’s Memorial Day. The second Sunday of each December is honored as Children’s Memorial Day. Though this started as a grassroots awareness movement by one family, it has been embraced by international organizations like Compassionate Friends, MISS, MADD, BPUSA, and more. When you are lighting your candles for winter holidays, add a candle for remembering those you love, for what you feel you’ve lost, for honoring the love
