Decolonizing Grief: A Resting Place Interview and Thoughts
5-24-2024
By: The Nightly Crew
This spring break, I had the privilege of interviewing Derek Dizon, founder of A Resting Place. Dizon created the Filipino-American centered grief and loss cultural response center after graduating from the UW School of Social Work. There is a lot to learn from A Resting Place, as it is a local example of building dual systems of grief and spiritual power in contrast to institutions that often do more harm than good. This article has been a very long time coming. I’ve been trying to make this article perfect, but as the saying goes, perfect is the enemy of done, so here goes.
As I sat down with Dizon and his dog Yema, he explained a little more about why he created the space. “My hope is that this space can be a space for grieving people to feel their loss everyday since… The reality is that not everyone is going to want to do one-on-one therapy or group work, especially if it is tied to an institution like a hospital. So I had this idea of creating a center that was integrated into a community where people could drop in and out.”
“The systems that are offered to us are very much entrenched in capitalism and white supremacy, whether it's a hospital or an organized religion. And it's unfortunate because so many of our families, our immigrant families, are so tied up in these systems in a way where they may not know or understand that there's possibilities outside of these systems. My hope is that A Resting Place can be a possibility outside of these systems; we don’t always need to go to the hospital when you're feeling emotionally distressed; we don’t always need to go to a pastor or a priest to receive some kind of blessing from them. There is so much strength in our own hearts and our own spirit that is handed down to us from our ancestors that we can tap into if we are open to it. I want this place to be a place where people can tap into that sacred energy."
Derek Dizon and his dog Yema greet people at A Resting Place in the International District.
Shortly after, I asked Dizon about the small cardboard sign sitting on a table that read ‘grief is a living being.’
“My mom was murdered when I was five; when she was murdered, I didn’t really know what death was. Developmentally, it’s hard for a five-year-old to understand or grasp grief and the concept and finality of death. I’ve been searching for this meaning of what that means for me all my life. It wasn’t until I was a teen that I was able to understand more about what death is, and understand for myself what I would like my connection to my mom to be.”
“I grew up in the church… When my mom died, a common thing that people told me is that ‘she’s sleeping,’ or ‘she’s with god now,’ or ‘she’s resting,’ or ‘she knows nothing.’ That’s a common quote in Christian communities, where people say the dead know nothing. So that was ingrained in my mind that she’s not here, she’s dead and that’s it. Or she’s sleeping and she’ll only wake up when god comes, but that’s only if she had been a good Christian. And I was like, ‘Wow, there’s so much contingency there.’ Maybe if I’m saved or if I’m a good christian enough I might be able to maybe see her in heaven. But that’s contingent on my not sinning and asking for forgiveness 24/7. And on top of that, if she doesn’t know anything and she’s just dead, what does it mean for me to have a connection to her? It almost felt like forming some kind of spiritual connection to her outside of the church felt also like a sin too. Mixing in me being queer, I’m like, I’m just damned then. I’ll never get to see her, you know. I think it must have been in my late teens, I was just like, well, f*** this s***”
“I cannot wait to go to a heaven that I’m not guaranteed because of who I am. I cannot wait for some sort of god to wake her up from sleeping. I want to be able to form some kind of connection to her in my own self-determined way and in a way that feels meaningful to me. I left the church when I was nineteen, and around that time that’s when I became open to what grief could look like for me. My grief experience has transformed so much since then. It’s almost as if even though I have my own self-determined way of how I want to experience my grief, my grief is transforming, it’s connecting me to different experiences, different people, different notions of how I view the world, spirituality, afterlife, view this life that we’re living in. And so in that way, grief feels like something that’s within me, but also besides me. Grief feels like something that’s into the future. I know it sounds kinda like meta right now, but I do feel that grief exists in time in a very different way than we exist in time, because the experience of grief is a relationship to a loss. When we think about time in a linear way and we think about a loss being something that has happened, it doesn’t really match up right. Because even though someone has died and has been separated from us, we as a person who is living still experience that ongoing relationship. To me, grief exists in time in a very nebulous and confusing way…”
“Grief is a living being; I think of it as ecosystemic. Our ecosystems are grieving, our air is grieving, our planet is going through so much distress. The human species is grieving. I think about how our individual experience of grief reflects so much of our environment. So in that way, grief is a living being because it’s active. It’s constantly changing. We’re constantly being informed by our own grief. Grief is always growing and in transition. When I think of grief as a living being I think about how it’s not just me transforming my own life through my own thoughts and my own experiences, but there’s this energy that’s alive through the grief that's transforming me.”
Signs with perspectives on grief include a sign stating that grief is a living being.
Dizon encouraged people to stop by and check out the space. Everyone is welcome and it is typically open Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays. In addition, information about how to support A Resting Place, especially as they try to figure out paying rent for the coming year, can be found here. More information can also be found on their Instagram, @arestingplace.sea.
It should be noted that much of this article is an analysis rather than a word-for-word account of the interview. In doing so, this article does not represent the opinions and beliefs of A Resting Place. Instead, I independently aim to write about the project and dive deeper into the political meaning behind it. Hope you all enjoy it!
Several bookshelves hold numerous memorials to loved ones.
Reclaiming Spirituality
Colonized communities have complicated relationships with colonial religions, like Christianity. On the one hand, these religions are tools for western colonialism, genocide, and cultural erasure. On the other hand, many cultures have embraced western religion as a seemingly inseparable part of their own culture, often practicing an adapted version of a western religion that better fits cultural norms. Western religions offer an avenue to express grief; however, this comes with strings attached.
Colonial religion's role in colonization can largely be described through its implementation as a tool of control. Converting people and co-opting their spirituality into a system controlled by the oppressor gave the West power. Power to deny salvation to anyone who dare revolt. As part of this, colonial religious institutions have led countless systematic campaigns of violence. One potent example of this is the church-sponsored violence against queer and trans people in the Philippine Archipelago, Latin America, and across the world. Queer people, once revered as integral parts of some communities, found themselves the target of the church and the state’s violence. This has ingrained a culture of transphobia, chauvinism, and homophobia into many cultures across the world.
This gets to the root of the problem with colonial western religions. They are inseparable from the west’s colonial project and often continue to reinforce traumatic cycles of oppression onto colonized church members. These religions are a spiritual manifestation of colonialism.
The presence of cultural and localized adaptations to colonial religions can be seen as piecemeal concessions. Concessions made by the centralized religion with the goal of making it more palatable and widespread as a tool of control. The complicated and difficult part is figuring out how to maneuver with decolonial efforts when such a large portion of the community is ingrained in these religions. From our interview with Dizon, we learned about the value of “meeting people where they are at.”
“Our cultures right now are so entrenched in [Western Religion], our cultures right now almost hold onto it as a last hope for the suffering. That’s something I’m always thinking about, the balance between dismantling what has been taken away from us while also leaving room for peoples’ journey that is so individually theirs in connection to their grief.”
Colonial powers and their religious authorities have systematically worked to dismantle localized, traditional, and Indigenous systems of grief and care, replacing them with pacifying and destructive western cultural institutions that many people remain spiritually dependent on today. Decolonizing spirituality might look like rebuilding localized practices of spirituality where communities are autonomous and people are interdependent on one another to fulfill their spiritual needs. The process and power of grief and spirituality needs to be taken out of the hands of colonial religions and taken back by the people. Autonomy in spirituality could replace systems of organized religion, building independent communities, healthy systems of grief, and mutual aid in the process.
As an interesting footnote about spirituality and contemporary politics, American liberals are often less critical of colonial western religion, focusing on reform instead of abolition. At the same time some, but by no means most, leftists are dogmatic atheists, condemning religions all together under the trusty ‘no gods, no masters’ mindset. Spirituality of some sort has existed for time immemorial, and expecting people to abandon all faith and spirituality is not realistic and may just be continuing to impose western ideas on others. Instead of abolishing spirituality, we could abolish organized religions, spiritually liberating ourselves and encouraging the people around us to be autonomous in their spirituality.
Institutionalized Care
The American response to the demolition of traditions of care is the institutionalization of care within the healthcare system. This has erected barriers for access and driven wild profits for the infamous US healthcare system. This healthcare system sees grief as something that needs to be treated, relying on the western ideological crutch that there is always a cure, and that there always needs to be a cure.
Another harmful norm is the system's insistence on institutionalized psychology and therapy, which mandates that care can only be provided by licensed professionals. These professionals are uplifted as the universal Band-Aid for all mental health care, decentering communities. We need to deconstruct these moral authorities. Therapists can never fully understand communities they are not part of. It also puts incredible stress on the few ‘licensed professionals,’ as they are overworked trying to fix an unfixable system. We live in a society devoid of social systems of care, and as a result, care becomes commodified and scarce.
Wall displays events with a large sign reading ‘We will hold each other up.’
Institutionalized care also prioritizes certain emotional expressions over others. Dizon told The Nightly, “Grief can be about love, grief can be about healing. To me it’s also about rage, it’s about vindication, it’s about defense, it’s about taking back what’s yours, and it’s about being powerful… I don’t think a lot of people talk about that. A lot of those stronger emotions are seen as negative in our society. When someone thinks about someone who is grieving, they don’t wanna see someone who is angry, they want to see someone who is sad and quiet in the corner. We can no longer be sad and quiet in the corner. I want this space to be a place where people can feel their anger and become politicized because of their grief. My grief is something that has led to my politicization… It has led me to understand deeply the intersections of domestic violence, gendered labor, and colonialism and imperialism in our home country. But not many people think about that when they think about why or how someone has died, because grief is so personal. And that shouldn’t take away from anyone’s personal experience of grief, and at the same time, there are reasons why people die, and there are legacies of oppression that contribute to why people die. I want A Resting Place to be a place where people can recognize that and know that for themselves too.”
State responses to the rotting out of autonomous systems of care have been predictably flawed, profit-driven, and harmful. At the risk of overusing this word, rebuilding autonomous systems of care, spirituality, and grief is our best bet. This section is comparatively short because another Nightly writer is working on an exciting piece about a similar topic, so stay tuned!
Outro
It was amazing getting to sit down with Derek. We talked for so long, and I only used a couple of quotes in this brief analysis article. Once again, I will plug the hours and donation link which can both be found at A Resting Place’s Instagram account @arestingplace.sea or at their Linktree. You can visit A Resting Place yourself on Fridays and Saturdays in the International District, anyone who is curious is encouraged to go check it out, and all are welcome.
In closing, Dizon touched back on the impetus for creating A Resting Place, and what it means to him. “This place was created because my mother was murdered, at the end of the day. That has impacted my understanding of grief… I want people to know that, although they are stepping into a place that’s beautiful– People often say, ‘It’s so beautiful in here, it’s so peaceful, it feels like a sanctuary.’ And that is true, I’ve worked very hard to make this place feel welcoming. At the same time, it is born out of something horrendous, something so vile and painful.”
“Not to say that we should dwell in the pain, but there is something very sacred about our pain… I think pain is really important to talk about, because it calls us to ask ourselves really difficult questions about how we want to continue to live our life. A Resting Place is about healing and about beautiful things and transforming our life, and I guess I’d encourage people to think differently about their pain, not thinking about their pain as something they need to throw away or get over, but to really lean into their pain and see where that pain leads them to. Not to say that people should continue suffering, but there is something about pain, specifically grief, that I think could open the doors to how we think about liberation and justice.”