Episode 5: Dinner with the Dead

Welcome to My Mother’s Trauma, a podcast exploring feelings about families, what to do with what’s passed down to us, and how to break the cycle for more justice and liberation. I am your host, Kim Loliya. Let’s take a moment to breathe.

Hello everyone. For those listening to the podcast back to back or relatively regularly, you probably heard from me a couple of weeks ago or even a few days ago, but for me it’s been a month since I’ve been recording and that’s because I’ve been moving house and I haven’t had the space

physically or emotionally to record and I’m so excited to be back that that transition period is over and that we’re now here again in community so thank you for still being here and sticking with the podcast for five whole episodes

And before we dive in, I have a big announcement, which is that at Black Psychotherapy, we’re going to be hosting our first ever conference in London. And we’ll be exploring the theme of justice in therapy.

This conference has been brewing in our minds and in our hearts for a really long time. It’s been a hope even before we had the language for what we really needed. And it’s a real pleasure and excitement to see this idea come to fruition.

and for us to have a space where we can explore these themes together. And it feels right to talk about justice within our profession and to leave diversity and inclusion behind.

Justice is our North Star because we’re done with talking about tokenistic EDI initiatives. I feel like we’ve done that. We’ve had that conversation. We’ve spoken about inclusion. We’ve spoken about equity.

and it feels like it’s time to move everything on and that’s why we’re centering justice.

We’re very fortunate to host our conference at the Liberation Centre in Brixton, which is the headquarters for the Advocacy Academy, who are a team of incredible humans who do social justice, youth organising work across the country. So it feels right that

We’re partnering and offering this into the world in this way, given that we have a really aligned focus for our work.

So if you’re interested, if you would like to have these conversations and dig into the practicalities of justice work so that we’re not just dreaming but we’re also doing and we’re collaborating so that our doing feels sustainable for the future. If that appeals, you’re very welcome to join.

you can find the tickets in the show notes. And now that that’s done let’s switch gears and have dinner with the dead because why not? It’s November, let’s do it. I invite you to go back in time with me for this episode.

which might feel more or less comfortable for you depending on your relationship with time and your relationship with time travel in particular. And as time is colonial, it feels like a worthwhile practice for those who are interested to value this movement across time as well as space.

So let’s go back to November 2023. As for me, this was a time that has influenced how I embody the current month that we’re traveling through.

This time last year I was in the middle of teaching my programme on intergenerational trauma and I was just between finishing one cohort and starting the second. So it was a time of transition and while that was happening I was also in Mexico

during Day of the Dead.

and I found myself immersed in all the things relating to the dead. And for someone who’s been raised in a death avoidant family, I was way out of my comfort zone. I didn’t feel ready to confront death in so much vivid detail.

And at the same time, I was also exploring with my groups how we can hold the dead and how we can hold our relationship to death as we’re working on our intergenerational and ancestral trauma.

but I still had this pull to avoid death and to avoid thinking about the dead, talking about the dead and the pull was really strong and that’s what inherited trauma feels like. It feels really primal.

But life wouldn’t let me get away with it. I just had to lean in.

And that was also a lesson that sometimes we end up breaking the cycle by chance rather than by choice. It doesn’t always need to be premeditated. Sometimes with intergenerational trauma life just sets it up and we get a win. And if that happens to you, enjoy it.

even if in the moment it might not feel entirely comfortable and being physically located on Mexican land as this was all going on played a big part in this process.

It felt like Mexico was a doula for me that held me while I worked through my mother’s trauma, my grandmother’s trauma and beyond. As a place it was deeply nurturing but also there was an intensity as well. It felt like I was being supported but also held accountable.

at the same time.

And I felt so honoured and moved by the open-heartedness and generosity of Mexican folks and their ancestors towards people like me who aren’t indigenous to the land, we’re people who just by visiting cause gentrification.

and displacement of local communities. This is a big topic and it’s a topic for another time, but I really wanted to acknowledge the complexities around existing on land that isn’t your own. And I also wanted to lovingly acknowledge the Maya people as the indigenous and

pre-colonial keepers of the Yucatan Peninsula, which is the region where I was located at the time. So back to Day of the Dead, this time period felt more like a season rather than a day.

It’s usually marked on the first and second of November but the build-up happened way before that with flowers, food, music, iconography, clothing and so much more and it felt like everything was being prepped with so much care and enthusiasm.

It was a really immersive and intergenerational experience because the whole community was involved and everyone played their part in these festivities. Day of the Dead is pre-colonial in origin dating back to the Aztecs

and their understanding of the cosmology of death being cyclical and a natural part of life. It’s about normalizing death rather than fearing it or avoiding it. Even the practice of bringing the dead to dinner and feasting with them is an example of a creative way

of embodying how we can work through grief and how we can do that within our community so that we don’t have to do it alone.

and it can also help with processing some of our existential fears around our own mortality. And during Day of the Dead season I remember that I started feeling differently about my death and at the time I wasn’t really sure why. It felt like something had

permeated my unconscious. But when I think about it, it’s these collective rituals that were altering my death avoidance in a very deep way. And I also remember how joyous this season was. And almost wondering whether it was okay for me to also be that happy.

to also join in in the collective joy. Seeing families tend to the graves of their loved ones while also hanging out together, talking, laughing, it just wasn’t as austere as the kind of cemetery visits that we often see in the West.

What I witnessed was a full day event.

And in that time people come and go, they bring their children, they bring food.

It’s a set of practices that are completely normalized.

The festive honoring of the dead is also indigenous to Haitian culture, with the celebration of Fetgede, where spirits possess voodoo practitioners, who then parade down the street. And in a similar way to Mexican culture, there’s also an intergenerational component.

where everyone is involved and everyone is welcome. Many African and Caribbean cultures also have their own rich traditions around death and they don’t necessarily take place now, they can take place throughout the year.

In Madagascar some tribes exhume the dead as part of their honoring and celebration and the day to do that is decided by an astrologer rather than it being attached to the Gregorian calendar.

Imagine how normalised death is within a culture like that, that’s so comfortable that remains can be exhumed.

It’s a world apart from how sanitised death and dying is within the global north.

And the global north also isn’t a monolith, so of course some cultures have a more easeful or joyful experience of remembering the dead.

but at least in the British or European context where I grew up, I haven’t seen a lot of joy or extended cemetery visits that seem more like a social gathering. While reading about indigenous and pre-colonial death practices,

I started thinking about this theme of joy and the difference between spontaneous joy and pressured joy. In Mexico, people seem to be genuinely joyful. Nobody said you had to be happy. It was just there, spontaneously, without any social pressure.

But in cultures that sanitize death and dying, there’s still a pressure to be joyful, but in a way that’s kind of contrived.

When people tell you that your loved one is in a better place or they’re no longer in pain it’s almost like there’s a pressure to show relief to show that you’re happy to hear that

And when someone’s often in our collective conversations, there’s a focus on their positive qualities and even who they were is sanitized.

It’s like the dead have never done anything wrong or like everyone who’s died is somehow automatically sanctified.

And there’s an expectation to grieve in that sanitized way without any space to feel other feelings including rage. Some of us have complicated feelings about the dead because the dead are complicated. They’re messy humans just like us.

They’re people who leave things unfinished or chaotic.

and that might be because they died suddenly, they were sick or they struggled with their own mortality.

The dead are also people who have harmed others, including their family members. And huge webs of multi-generational pain can spring out from the actions of just one person who’s died.

So it might not be realistic to grieve in a way that’s sanitized or joyful. It might only be possible to grieve in a way that’s complicated.

So on one hand we have these feelings about the dead and on the other we have these external expectations and pressure to sanitize and be joyful.

And when I think about honoring the dead through ancestral work and the reclamation of indigenous practices, it feels important to hold it all.

I want to bring in the rage because I’ve had times in my life where the idea of feasting with some ancestors just wouldn’t have been welcome.

I couldn’t have imagined even being in the same room as my ancestors, let alone at a table feasting in celebration.

So if rituals and practices can’t make space for people like me during this season, maybe we need to reimagine them so that we can have more liberation. It’s almost like these practices, they might fail to create a container that’s big enough for who we are.

in our fullness.

and there’s a risk these practices will be alienating and end up replicating a colonial, sanitized version of grief. And if we’re located in the West, there’s plenty of that kind of thing going around.

and what isn’t helpful is more of that being internalised so that our grief is caged.

thinking about the current season we’re in.

I’m reminded of the bright colours that I saw in Mexico.

what it was like to celebrate in that expansively joyful way.

and this year I’m not there anymore and this season is feeling way more muted and that’s okay.

and I’ve been wondering what a decolonial approach to honouring grief looks like from that place where things don’t feel as jubilant.

And I guess a starting point is acknowledging that I’m in a different place this year, not just physically but emotionally as well.

So if you’re thinking about your dinner with the dead and the possibility of feasting

It’s okay if you’re not feeling it or if it brings up too many feelings. We don’t have to do a big festivity or celebration. Finding a smaller way to mark this season is absolutely okay.

You might not want to have dinner. You might not want to have a whole meal with the dead. You might want to have a snack or one dish.

Or maybe you might need to get some things off your chest before you have dinner with the dead. I’ve had to do that in the past because feasting didn’t feel authentic as I was holding on to some things that I felt that I needed to say before I could relax and enjoy my food.

and enjoy the company as well.

And when we think about honouring rituals and practices, sometimes there’s a difference between how we imagine honouring the dead and what it might be like in the moment.

Sometimes the mind creates a projection of the future, but then when we’re in community, we’re sharing stories, things feel more possible somehow, and it might be more possible to show up as we are.

That’s the thing with ancestral work, it’s inherently fluid and contextual.

it really doesn’t have to look a particular way.

You can adapt it, you can make it your own and perhaps it’s even more powerful when you do.

It’s that permission to approach this time with honesty about where we really are and what’s going on and that can make a huge difference to the quality of honouring that we can provide.

or we might even choose not to do this work right now in this season or at all which is fine as well.

Avoidance can be a strategy for self-protection and some of us might be feeling completely overwhelmed by death in these genocidal times.

It can be so hard and even guilt-inducing to remember our loved ones who have died when entire populations are being wiped out as we speak.

So in that case, any remembering work needs to be way broader so that it’s helpful.

So I hope that you get to where you need to be during this season that you find a way of honouring the dead and honouring yourself in the process and that you can give yourself permission to do this work or not do this work as much or as little as you’d like to.

For those who would like to journey in community during this time, I will be offering a workshop on the 10th of November on Honouring the Dead and Honouring the Living.

We’ll be giving ourselves permission to do this work in whatever way feels good for us and supporting each other in the process. The link to join is in the show notes.

and take care of yourself however you choose to do this work.

If you’d like to learn more about intergenerational trauma, as well as decolonial and anti-oppressive ways to heal, check out blackpsychotherapy.org. We offer classes, programs and talking therapy for individuals, couples and groups. If you’d like journal prompts, decolonial musings and special discounts,

You can sign up to our newsletter via the link in the show notes, where you can also find a link to submit a question for me to answer in a future episode. I super look forward to connecting with you again and take care.