End of Life Conversations: Normalizing Talk About Death, Dying, and Grief

Burned Out on the World? Grief, Anger, and Finding Hope Again

Rev Annalouiza Armendariz & Rev Wakil David Matthews & Sam Zemke Season 6 Episode 18

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0:00 | 38:36

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There’s a growing sense of grief that doesn’t always have a clear name.

Many people are feeling disillusioned, angry, or emotionally exhausted as they watch the world around them shift. It can feel like losing faith in society, in shared values, or in the idea that things will get better.

In this episode, we explore the pervasive feeling of distrust within the United States. We delve into the erosion of trust in people and the core idea of what we believe we should be as a country, touching upon national symbols and the cultural identity that defines us. The discussion also considers the societal norms and the perceived veneer that often masks deeper issues.

We talk about collective grief, moral injury, and the emotional impact of living in times of uncertainty and injustice. More importantly, we explore how to stay grounded, connected, and engaged without burning out.

Topics include:

- How to cope with grief about the world
- Processing anger and hopelessness in healthy ways
- What collective grief and moral injury really mean
- How to build community during difficult times
- Finding hope without ignoring reality

This episode is for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the state of the world and wants a more honest, grounded way to move forward.

Support the show

This podcast helps anyone dealing with loss. It can guide you with end-of-life planning and death-positive resources. 

Check out our introductory episode to learn more about Annalouiza, Wakil, and our vision/mission to normalize and destigmatize conversations about death, dying, grief, and loss.

You can find us on SubStack, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and BlueSky. You are also invited to subscribe to support us financially. Anyone who supports us at any level will have access to Premium content, special online meet-ups, and one-on-one time with Annalouiza or Wakil.

And we would love your feedback and want to hear your stories. You can email us at endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.



SPEAKER_00

Hey, welcome everybody. I am the Reverend Joaquil David Matthews. And in this weekly conversation with my dear friends here, we were thinking about the feeling of distrust or the feeling, the loss of trust in the people that, or in in even the idea of what we think we should be as a country, as a culture. We have these, you know, this veneer anyway, of being the moral, the moral compass of freedom, you know, we're sharing freedoms throughout the world, sharing human rights. And even though that veneer has its faults, and we know that it's not uh always real or often not real, um, right now it's particularly under attack. And we're particularly seeing it. Um, the mudslide, I love that, the mudslide of all of those feelings that we are a more that we hold some kind of moral compass in the world. And in fact, we're doing the opposite. We're showing the world the worst face, the the shadow face of our humanity, that we are actually doing the worst possible things. We're killing children, we're killing um, you know, we're we're ignoring our elders, we're uh we're ignoring our homeless. There's so many, so many ways that we're seeing our culture kind of dissolve, or that that veneer, or what we hope for our culture to be dissolve. And so I thought we'd talk about that today, just about how how that feels, the loss that we feel about that, and maybe some ideas around what we could do as in our in our own worlds to help recreate that or help that be different. So what do you think, folks? Woofed. That's what I think. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I am the Reverend Mother Ana Luisa Nendades, and I want to say that the this is a very real death that we're encountering. It is a death of you called it a veneer. It's it's a an idea that was fostered in this country, you know, hundreds of years, a couple hundred years ago. And it's it's not real anymore. It and we are sensing a death. We're in the labor moments of the end of something. We can't individually figure out how to manage this loss, but collectively, we're going to have to grapple with this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We're going to have to figure out what it means uh as a culture, as a society. I'm not even sure if it's a culture, but as a country. How do we face the rest of our brothers and sisters around the world to sh to say, you know, we still care about you. You're still a good and loving human.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Sam. What say you?

SPEAKER_03

I say that I just got distracted by a car alarm outside my house right now. Um so I'm gonna be real. I didn't pick up much of that because it was very loud and very close to my to my ear. Maybe so maybe I should just listen for a little while longer. I'm gonna say that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think part of the for me anyway, part of the I mean, we were just we've been talking about the veneer of morality and ethics that supposedly is part of the country we live in, you know.

SPEAKER_01

The institution.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And and it's and it's it's got, I mean, and realistically, there's a lot of examples of how we've failed in that uh over the years and continue to fail in that. But it's so in our face right now that we're seeing the kind of the shadow side of of what we feel like is our ethical, moral values, right?

SPEAKER_01

So actually, maybe it's not even the shadow side, Joaquil. If you can't, if you go all the way back to the origins, yeah, you know, the folks who showed up here killed a lot of people to take this land. Yeah. And then they shipped in a lot of other people to like build the land for them.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's literally ex like what they wanted. It is no different. I think the the the paradigm we thought we lived in is never the case. And we're now seeing like it really is what it wants to be. It is not a shadow side. This is this is not the underbelly. It's like, yeah, it is taken off the mask.

SPEAKER_00

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Good way to put it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That yeah, the the foundation of this country and a lot of the culture that we live under is the shadow side of humanity. And uh and I think at this uh at this point in time there is a more there is a more complex piece of it. I think about it a lot around like Thanksgiving time and uh um and the schizophrenic narratives that we uh tell and stories and myths that we have as a country. Yeah. Um, you know, the the myth of multiculturalism that we learn as children uh around a holiday like Thanksgiving. That, you know, the settlers were struggling and they were starving, and so the very gracious indigenous population uh came in and and offered knowledge of indigenous food ways and saved the settlers from uh from starvation. From imminent death, and everybody was so grateful and so happy that they sat down and had a meal together and uh happily ever after.

SPEAKER_00

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03

When the reality of that day and what that celebration was was the settlers not liking that there was an indigenous population nearby, massacring them, stealing all their food, and having a party about that. That is a very schizophrenic uh identity and and sense of self that we carry as Americans. And so what's what's happening maybe is the acceleration, like you're saying, Waquil, of the the erosion of the veneer of the illusion of what we aspire to as a multicultural nation. Those of us who have heart and soul and believe in those things and the reality of the underpinnings that have built and maintained this country since day one. Yeah. And Western culture in many ways as colonial states, as uh you know, the the process of of Christianization and internalization of the violence and then reproduction of it and things like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, we see that. And I I think part of the the dissolving of all of that, or the dissolving of the veneer, is we're seeing people right now who are basically the in power, or who are supposedly our government, gu governing us, who are just blatantly ignoring any sense of morality, blatantly saying, you know, that we are the only right people and everybody else is wrong, and we can do whatever we want. We can wipe out people, we can murder children, we can murder, uh, we can ignore the homeless, we can quit supporting uh poor the poor. We we don't need to do any of that stuff because the only people that really matter are the wealthy rich white people, really, when it comes right down to it. Um and the men, the males.

SPEAKER_01

Um white supremacy is all that matters, essentially.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. And that that's the way things should be. And and in many cases, I think most most of the people who are governing right now, um, are not and I shouldn't say everybody, but definitely the people who are being making the most noise and causing the most trouble, um, are just basically saying, yeah, that's the way it always was, always should be. Um and and those of us who don't feel that way are like, oh my God, you know, how can this even be happening? I mean, I I I feel that, I guess for me, I'm just over and over feeling like just despair and like, oh my God, how can this possibly be happening? How why can't we make this stop? You know, what do we what do we have to do to make this stop? And what can we do about it? And how can we repair the harm that's been done? It's a huge off huge question.

SPEAKER_01

It is a huge question, but let me just also throw this out. What if um what if the idea that we've held as the components that makes us the United States dies, is gone. All those things that we thought we are like the supporters of the, you know, of the folks who are hungry and sick and elderly and all over the world. We've tried to help out. We've is for years we have tried to go out. It's it's a double-edged sword because our help has always been kind of shady at best. But it's gone. In this country, like you said, you know, we have so many different issues with humanity, with our with our neighbors essentially. And there is our country is saying it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, stockholders and you know, the supremacy of who we are at the top is who we need to take care of. This country dies, it's dead. Like we we don't have anything, like the rebuilding of something, the composting, it's gonna take decades. So can we hold space for the death of an ideal that truly wasn't ever there, but now it's really gone away? Like right? So, how do we how do we as an individual and as a collective recognize that we can't keep pretending that it's gonna get better? It's dead. And sometimes when somebody dies, we have to like do ritual, we have to get together with our community, and we have to grieve. And I think that we are we are in the labors right now of of of uh death, and it's it's going to be the end. I mean, I keep hearing from a lot of my older friends who are like, this is just another cycle, we're gonna get fine. Wait for the midterms. I've been hearing that for two years. Wait for the midterms, wait for the midterms. I know, right? Like, and I keep saying the same thing, like, that is such a crock. That is it. No, this is it. This is it, folks.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We in the end.

SPEAKER_00

First thing is to accept that, right? Just as with someone when you're dying, is the very first practice is to accept that you're dying, right? And to be willing to be in that space of dying and and not only be in it, but celebrate it and um and and you know, appreciate what that offers. Um, so what it offers in this case, when we're talking about culture, it offers a way or an opportunity to think about what would it what would the ideal actually look like, you know, and how can we in our own little communities begin to build that. So and and what would that so yeah, what what what can we what can we learn if we accept that yeah, that this is dead and dying and probably was has been dead and dying for a long time.

SPEAKER_01

Right. So I, you know, as a former homeschool mom, so we always talked about the cycle of life and what it requires, right? So we have to give it time. I mean, we always tell people take your time graving, take your time at the end. It, you know, when I've been with some folks, I always encourage them, like, be with the body of your loved one for as long as you need to.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It, you know, and it used to be three days. Well, it it is historically in a lot of cultures three days, because at three days you start decomposing and you start smelling bad. And the people who have been in wake around the body are exhausted. But they have both intellectually and emotionally and physically understood that there has been a death. And now we can take the person and bury them, right? And be done. And then the grief cycle starts. You know, you miss the person, you wish you had said, you start, you know, you start kind of reorganizing your life with the loss. And then, you know, a spring comes through and there's new growth. And so, you know, if we think about the death of our veneer of our country, right now we might be in the throes of laboring a death.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And collectively we need to ritualize it. And I don't want to talk about an ideal of what we're gonna recreate. I want to talk about like the essence of what humanity, what not even humanity, because that's like such humane, again, human supremacy. How can we collectivize so that we can support our world as a whole moving forward, right? So that's my my two bits there.

SPEAKER_00

No, I love that. That's really well well put, as always.

SPEAKER_01

Just thoughts.

SPEAKER_03

There's I just started reading this book, so I can't uh fully give it like a through and through um recommendation for everybody. But it's been in my library, and Ana Luisa told me yesterday that it's been in her library for a while.

SPEAKER_01

Well, but Bakil, I think, already read it, so he's the one who recommended it.

SPEAKER_03

Hospicing hospicing modernity. Yeah. Um and really it is uh it is this question. It is looking at the ways, not just political parties, not just, you know, uh uh ways of life or myths or just like the entire concept, the foundation of the world that we live in um is dying. And how to show up in that uh in that world and and acknowledge and examine the ways that we're attached to it and and are grieving the different pieces that we're leaving uh and losing. And I mean the the author, she's talking about flush toilets and she's compostable. The compostable and the and the and what we have lost in this process, the gifts and and the challenges in it. But uh one of the one of the pieces that really stuck with me in the pieces that I've read so far is a saying, and I don't remember where she said it came from. Uh maybe it's Russian. No, it's Brazilian. It's a it's a flood, a flood aphorism. You can't swim until the water is hip deep. And until then you just gotta wade through it. And so the water's rising.

SPEAKER_01

I like that. Yeah, the water is rising.

SPEAKER_03

And it's a slog and you don't feel the motion and it's sticky until the water hits a certain point. And it talks about, you know, also the the the level of crisis that we need before we feel the real breaking and can respond and band together like what happened in Minneapolis. You know, like you can do, you can have, as I've said before, you can have block parties and you can get to know your neighbors, but you don't know how to respond until shit hits a fan. Shit hits the fan at a certain level of crisis. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's so interesting because uh this morning, my daughter, I should probably not say her name, but um, she's you know, I have been like a uh a cognitive prepper my whole life, only because I've always been afraid of people coming to like take me away and do all these things. But this kiddo has become an active, let's resilient kind of person, right? So for months she's been like, we need to stock up. I'm gonna start growing food, you know, we need to get more uh um solar panels, and you know, like she's really I got it. But this morning we sat and made the list because today, because we I read the article, like we've got like two weeks in these other countries before they're gonna kind of grind kind of pandemic style and not be able to produce and then move goods, right? And I saw the list of like things that might be really hard to come by. So I made a list this morning, like at six in the morning, you know, okay, like this is it. And we sat and talked about it because we're gonna go tonight and we're gonna like try to get some stuff. And and she said, you know, we're gonna be okay. You've got a lot of skills, you've taught me so much. We've lived in other countries where we didn't have toilets all the time and you don't get toilet paper all the time. And she's like, it's not that big a deal. But she's like, people around us aren't gonna know how to do it.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And so, you know, that's the thing. Like, we're gonna have to be the teachers for our extended community at some point. And when nobody's able to, you know, slog anymore.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah. Yeah. People are falling in. We got to pull them up. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that whole um the toilets issue is really interesting because it's it ex it again kind of speaks to how that how we've covered, we cover over all the things that we don't want to think about, right? We just we use some of the most pure water in the world to flush away our shit. And so that we don't have to so we don't have to think about it, right? So we don't have to look at it. And um and you know, for many, many years we just flushed it out into the low nearest water source. Um that that maybe has changed a little bit, but still that that whole sense that you know we don't want this in our house, you know. Um death is the same way. We don't want this dead body in our house. Let's get it out of here as fast as possible and as quietly as possible so the neighbors don't notice. You know, and so we what do we lose? We lose so much from that, we lose so much connection. Uh and and as you as you're speaking to the the sense that we um Yeah, that we do that we can actually start thinking about ways that as you're talking about Ana Luisa, that we how do we do this in our own home and how do we do it with our people around us? How do we start to get connections with our our neighbors and our friends and uh people that because when that all does fall down, when we do admit that it's dying or de or dead, uh when the waters come over our head, I like that we're gonna we're gonna have uh we're gonna be in a situation where the only one we're gonna be able to help is the person we could touch, you know, that's next to us walking that's swimming with us, basically. And and everything else is gonna be outside of our control. It is already outside of our control. And you're right, you know, the midterms aren't gonna change anything. Not gonna change that. The the collapse is happening, it has been happening since it is happening years ago. Yeah, that that uh the uh hospicing modernity came out, what is it, ten years ago or six years ago or something like that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's been a bit, it's been a hot minute for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and at that point they were saying this can't it's unsustainable and it's gonna collapse. And what do we do about that? How do we face that? So accepting that, treating it as as what it is, a death and a and a loss, and ritualizing it is a huge part of it. That I think I'd love to hear more ideas from you all about how would that what would that look like? What would ritualizing recognizing this and then ritualizing the end of uh the the end of the world as we know it.

SPEAKER_01

The end of the world. That should be our song.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And I don't mind.

SPEAKER_01

No, I don't mind. Uh you know, there's years and years ago, um I believe that spirit has me interact or find little gems. And I was walking through the public library in Little Rock, Arkansas, and and I was I had my I was making a beeline for where I was going, but for some reason I stopped and I kind of like did this and I looked, and there was this Buddhist book that I actually I have like three copies of because I I like to get away. But it it was about um meditating uh at the end of life. I think I can't remember the title right now, but the whole practice was to imagine you're dying and you're dead, and then you're rotting, you're you know, composting, and what is or what remains. And the practice is to do it so many times. It's very also um it's not uh it's Japanese, the um what are the the warriors? They used to do that.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, the uh Shinto, uh um I know what she was talking about. The samurai.

SPEAKER_01

The samurai were to wake up every morning and consider what their death looks like. And then they would get up and go. And I really love that. I I think that's a fabulous practice. And I think that it's the the practice is is is about Clearly seeing in your mind's eye a a potential reality and getting just really comfortable with it. And what does it feel like if I don't have this country, if I don't have a home, if I don't have a flesh toilet and get really uncomfortable in the in in the practice, and then as you move through it and everything just kind of dissolves, and it's like it's okay. You know, people have been in this situation before and they're okay too. I mean, people have been in the most heinous situations and have lived right. And so then you bring yourself back to in this moment, we are safe. We have electrical, we have water, we have a safe home. How can I help to prepare others? Will you help by preparing yourself by being very calm, by being very um judicious in the choices you make on a day-to-day as the world is dying, as the our elements of our society are shifting and moving like you know, sand? I think that's a ritual that we could all practice. Like not to be afraid. Well, be afraid, yeah, and then keep seeing through it and move through it. And it may take an hour, it might take days, it might take a couple months for you to finally be really okay with that. But I think it is a really beautiful practice.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. That's a good individual ritual to begin. And could could that be maybe Sam? Maybe you could speak to this because you have people around you. Could that be brought into a community of of your peers? Uh do you think you could could how would that look to bring that into a community of your peers?

SPEAKER_03

Uh I mean the first thing that comes to mind is to have a dying party and you all come around and you lie around and and die together. Or I mean shit. Go do a die-in. If you're talking about doing an active and and protest, because doing our own inner inner work is good. And if we can, you know, engage in a wider way.

SPEAKER_01

Um how about the creative arts too, right? Like that is very creative. It's very like theater. But I think that um this also calls for art making.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

This calls for poetry and storytelling and sculpture making and installation art. I think that's how that is one of the collective rituals we can do together.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Create create our way through. Maybe you could tell us about the art you just did recently, because that was a very good example of exactly what you're saying, I believe. My portal? Yeah, your portal.

SPEAKER_01

My portal. Yes. It was uh it was a little room that I built. And what I wanted people to do, it was in an art gallery. And so it was housed in a, you know, very sterile environment, very clean and beautifully lit. But as you entered the portal, there were like native grasses and feathers and stones and soil, and you would look around. It's it was um I it was a painting of the arsenal. So there used to be two places here in Denver area where we had a lot of radioactive uh materials being produced. One of them is now a park. Well, it's a it's a hikey, excuse me, hikey park. I just uh read an article last week that you do go there at your own risk because it's still radioactive. And I think the other the Rocky Mountain Arsenal is also radioactive because you actually can't get out of your car in some sets, but they have put they have uh rewild bison there. And so there's a there's like a herd of bison out there, but you can't get out of your car. I think it's because the bison are there, but um, they probably are all absorbing a lot of the radioactivity that's still in the soil. And I did it because it, you know, it's it's it's pointing to reclamation, rewilding, and you know, we're part of this, and we can go and and bear witness both to the travesty that has been done up on the land and the travesty of isolating us from the land. Yeah. So that was my R piece. Yeah, it's like dismantled and all over and all over my house now.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's another uh metaphor, I think. Um and actually we're interviewing uh Saladin in an hour or so, and one of the conversations that I wanted to have with him is about a ritual he's done, which is um exactly what kind of what we're talking about, which is he basically has people dig their own graves, um, and then they go through this whole ritual of letting go of different parts of being alive, and then they go sleep in the grave overnight. Um, and so um that's maybe you know, it's another example perhaps of how we begin to um be in acceptance of that and and use that as a metaphor, but it's also a way of uh of recognizing up for ourselves, you know, what that that we're gonna die and that what that's gonna look like. But when you can, if you can take that another step to um, this is what's happening to our our culture right now, to our society, and um, and how do we spend time in that conversation? How do we connect those um metaphorical pieces, you know, what of loss, different kinds of loss that happen when you die to the loss that's happening in our world? Yeah, it sounds like a fun uh I don't know, fun to the word, fun might not be the right word, but a compelling um good time together. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. As uh as we're talking about all of these like death embodiment rituals, I I feel around the edges of my awareness the uh the difficulty of holding that when we when we try to expand ourselves into like a collective and an or like an organismal consciousness, either as like a nation, a globe, uh and and to feel the parts of us that are uh dying and the struggle of uh of holding and accepting like okay, this sort of like white supremacist western hegemonic world is dying. And the people who are uh who have benefited most from that are the most afraid and lashing out in denial of that death and trying as many desperate measures as possible to hold on to that power and will go to any lengths to do that, including mass murder. And I struggle with with accepting the casualties and martyrs of that mass murder as just like, oh, that's just a part of this dying process. There's a it feels like there's a level of callousness that my heart struggles with. And I don't know what to do with that, and I don't necessarily have have any advice for how to how to manage that. I just wanted to acknowledge that I experienced that and I imagine a lot of other people are too.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And ecology loss too, like the all of the pieces, you know, cutting down all our forests and their, you know, like like the the rapid, you know, uh acceleration in this death time. Yeah, yeah. And and how do we grapple with with uh and what do we do to like try and head it off? And like is just grieving that that certain aspects of the world are ending and ecology losses ending without shutting down and and just getting fatalistic about it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, it's either fatalistic or shutting down or like a rage and and like you know, fight back, right? Like there's a it's a it's a choice that you've come to and we have to figure out how we're gonna do it. Going back to your very deep sense of not appropriate deaths with the mass genocides and the murders of you know our loved ones around, you know, psycho pump work is very real, and I've done that before. And have you heard of psychopom?

SPEAKER_03

Explain it to me.

SPEAKER_01

Psychopomps are well, I think they started out by um being the people who kind of take took care of poltergeists. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when spirits get trapped in certain spaces. Uh, there's another gentleman I've followed for years. Uh, during the pandemic, we did a lot of um online ceremony and work around this because he's like, When when somebody dies in abject fear, their spirits are like, they don't want to go to the light. They're like, wait, I this is not okay. What's going on? Or, you know, a murder, or I did the work for a cousin who was killed in a motorcycle accident. And what you do is it's like shamanic journeying, and you go and find the soul and you help them get across and you move them. And so he was doing that work for folks who died early on in the COVID pandemic, who died in very extreme, stressful, ugly kind of ways. And he's like, it is our work now to bear witness to how they went and support them as they need to go travel across to the other side. So there is, I believe, psychopom work is something we can also do.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And I think that that whole sense of um ritual and uh we we did a practice this weekend um at a retreat I was at where we were talking about forgiveness and um and asking for forgiveness. And one of the people said, you know, I I want to just say how sorry I am to the planet, you know, because no matter, even though I live my life in as clean and health and and aware away as I possibly can, I am contributing to the death of the planet. And I think about that. Just holding that awareness and you know, having a chance to just be with people and say those words and weep, you know. That's that's just that's part of that. And and it's also what you're saying, Sam, about you know, just we don't we don't just the acceptance doesn't mean that we just gloss over the fact that this is happening. We have to part of that acceptance is to take responsibility and to feel the pain of it and to share that pain with our beloveds and with our friends and our communities. I think that's part of what we're talking about when we talk about ritual needs to be happening.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah. Um the the maybe last piece that that I want to talk about, I see our time is growing short. Um in synthesizing what we're talking about with um ritual and creativity. Um I am reminded of something that I want to talk about very carefully here as to not um not come across as recommending any particular course of action. But I am reminded about certain discussions and education um teachings that I have encountered uh regarding uh key points in Haitian history and how in the West we so often are taught of it, taught about it as a material, political, uh violent social uprising. And it, you know, that is the key part. But more and more what I learn about it or or the the stories that I encounter in my education and and the spheres that I'm stepping into is the ritual component of that transformative period and how the uh the spiritual leaders in those communities held rituals, very powerful ancestral connection rituals to uh invoke the gods of justice, the uh the uh deity forms, the uh spiritual archetypal or energetic forces that care for the oppressed, that care for the martyred, and all of the ancestors who have uh died under uh such conditions, who have died fighting against such conditions, and and asking for their guidance in how to move forward.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

And doing that in a collective space. And so I'm not recommending any particular course of action, but commune collectively if you are a ritualist, if you have any if you just want to try, be careful because sometimes, you know, ancestors are benevolent, ancestors all my clean. And what does benevolent mean too? Right, right? Like, like the fiery heart and and um righteous fury can can be a benevolence.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

But but still be like be careful about how you're entering into conversation. And I think I'm getting self-conscious about this. All right, stay on this train, thought trained. Thank you. That's good.

SPEAKER_00

No, I appreciate that. I I think whatever way you can approach it, and I think it's also important to be careful. Uh I've I've been to grief rituals that were totally out of hand, you know, because nobody was paying attention. No, it was just all let it all go. And that can lead to psychological issues. So yeah, be thoughtful about it, be careful about it, have people who are guide you wise and can guide and be there uh as facilitators. Um and just yeah, I think we we could all you do better this way, and it'll help. It'll help with the acceptance that we have now, and maybe also, as you as we've said, help with guiding us toward what do we do, how do we go forward. So may it be so.

SPEAKER_01

May it be so.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Love you guys. Talk to you lick again soon.

SPEAKER_01

Bye, adios.

SPEAKER_00

Adios. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you to Charles Heastan, the composer of the original music you are listening to now.

SPEAKER_01

And of course, thanks to you, our audience, and all of our amazing guests. Please come back next week for another great episode. Share this with your friends, family, and community. We hope you will subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Substack. Each guest's additional information will be found in the podcast notes. And of course, if you have a good end of life story to share, please reach out. We are always eager to hear from you.

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