Reimagining Holidays: Light
Love, Light, and Ugly Cries: Christmas Day Around the Fire
Christmas Day can look so different year to year when we’re grieving. Sometimes we share sweet stories of remembrance in gatherings. We can joyfully channel our loved ones who are no longer with us through recipes. Sometimes we’re numb and aren’t sure what to do or feel. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you know that other families are gathering and you miss your loved ones. Grief can look like anger, like a dance party, like an ugly cry because the world feels like a dumpster fire, and so many other things.
Come in your pj’s or whatever makes you feel comfy cozy. ring a warm mug of coffee or tea, a candle, and a journal. Together we will bear witness to what this day is bringing up for us. We will be in solidarity in this mysterious unfolding because grief is a shapeshifter. All your shapes are welcome here.
Reimagine continues to offer gatherings on holidays, often times of extreme vulnerability and grief. In particular, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and winter celebrations in December can be difficult because of their traditional associations with family members and reunions. However, even in the darkest seasons of sorrow, reasons for gratitude and joy can be found. As physical distancing relaxes, it’s time to reimagine holidays and discover what matters most about these annual events.
Luana Morales (she/her) is an Afro-Boricua birth, death, and ancestral healing arts practitioner. Her roles include birth and bereavement doula, death midwife, circle keeper, officiant, reiki master teacher, ritual guide, spiritual coach, and herbal apprentice devoted to reclaiming and reimagining our birth, death, and Afro-Indigenous healing practices. She co-creates containers that support reflection, experimentation, healing, learning, collaboration, and joy for our individual and collective liberation. In 2017 she co- founded Seeds of Our Ancestors, a mobile interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and multi-lineage healing squad in service to movement spaces devoted to healing justice. In 2020 she started the Spirit of the Earth Carry Me Home Project. This was a response to disproportionate COVID-19 deaths in low income/undocumented/LGBTQI communities to offer support with the financial impact of the death of a loved one. The project provides an eco-friendly cardboard coffin to be decorated by family (supplies provided) or a local artist, death midwife support, transport of the body, and cremation. In Spring 2021 she started the Journey of the 13 Moons Cohort, a sacred BIPOC-only space to reconnect/discover their medicine, reclaim the exiled parts of themselves, and bring healing to their bloodlines.
