Brilliant post! Embracing and sharing grief honors our humanity and relationships with the world. Sharing the weight of shared grief is truly a path to healing and love for us individually and collectively. This is profound wisdom you've shared. Thank you!
"As adults we tend to approach grief and ancestry with a kind of heaviness, as if reverence requires solemnity. But children understand something we forget: care and play are not opposites." As a veteran middle school teacher I agree 100%. The heaviest things often need a bit of ridiculousness to help us engage instead of averting our eyes.
Shalay, I also agree with you! It’s something I think we have to prioritize as public school teachers, I think this sense of play and humor is the #1 way of connecting to our students and cultivating a supportive learning culture. And it’s something that we have to choose individually, because the schedule and the standards and the grades culturally take up most of our bandwidth. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts. How are you doing this school year?
You are a teacher too? Cool. I am doing pretty well this school year. Since covid and shooter drills, I feel like anything I face in the classroom is old hat. 🤣
It’s a heavy read, thank you for reading and sitting with it. I like what you’ve been posting too about these big feelings. We’ll get through this. I’m glad I’ve found your substack!
Something I like to mention when teaching about Day of the Dead is how it is viewed as a time to party with the dead. To remember them with joy. Im many cultures, funerals are sorrow mixed with a party. These connective ways of dealing with grief as struggle are growing more foreign as people spend more time with computer abstractions. More people die alone in hospitals. Funeral homes keep us from really seeing our dead. Etc etc
Brilliant post! Embracing and sharing grief honors our humanity and relationships with the world. Sharing the weight of shared grief is truly a path to healing and love for us individually and collectively. This is profound wisdom you've shared. Thank you!
Thank you momma, I love you!
"As adults we tend to approach grief and ancestry with a kind of heaviness, as if reverence requires solemnity. But children understand something we forget: care and play are not opposites." As a veteran middle school teacher I agree 100%. The heaviest things often need a bit of ridiculousness to help us engage instead of averting our eyes.
Shalay, I also agree with you! It’s something I think we have to prioritize as public school teachers, I think this sense of play and humor is the #1 way of connecting to our students and cultivating a supportive learning culture. And it’s something that we have to choose individually, because the schedule and the standards and the grades culturally take up most of our bandwidth. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts. How are you doing this school year?
You are a teacher too? Cool. I am doing pretty well this school year. Since covid and shooter drills, I feel like anything I face in the classroom is old hat. 🤣
Honestly veteran teachers are mystics to me…I’m like, how do you do it?!
This is my 4th year, coming from 6 years of 8 Shields Mentoring and Nature Connection practices, so the school system is a daily struggle for me.
I was a compete wreck for 10 years 🤣
Thank you, I love all of this
It’s a heavy read, thank you for reading and sitting with it. I like what you’ve been posting too about these big feelings. We’ll get through this. I’m glad I’ve found your substack!
Something I like to mention when teaching about Day of the Dead is how it is viewed as a time to party with the dead. To remember them with joy. Im many cultures, funerals are sorrow mixed with a party. These connective ways of dealing with grief as struggle are growing more foreign as people spend more time with computer abstractions. More people die alone in hospitals. Funeral homes keep us from really seeing our dead. Etc etc