Dia de Muertos is only something I started educating myself on about four years ago when I first painted a calavera on my face and captioned the post "Celebrando a los que se fueron muy rapido". I didn't know then what I know now. My make up was done to represent death but also the light it brings (I used a lot of yellows) and that sign on my forehead means harmony, something I strive for constantly but that is really hard for me to reach. Calaveras is also the term used to describe pieces, stories, and poems written about the ones who've passed. And though I haven't been writing lately, today I write not only for the ones I've loved and lived and who have transcended the human definition of existence, but I also write about my release of the things I no longer want to hold onto in hopes that relinquishing these feelings will free my mothers and their mothers of the hurt their lifetimes brought them. Today I celebrate and liberate. I release And deliver Pain inherited that does not belong to me. Nostalgia for lives my soul remembers but can't tell me. For scars my heart has but can't show. I release the ghosts of loves that too have died and deserve to be celebrated but guided somewhere else far from me. I let go of the anxiety that always feels so foreign when it visits, Surprising me in between beats of highs and lows always playing the same tune of fear. Fear of time and it's speed, and of how little I understand it. Today I set free that same fear that that filled my grandmothers eyes when she spoke of death and instead remember the joy in her eyes when she sang boleros in her rocking chair. I remember her loud laugh at stories that did not include her but that she never missed. I imagine that is what her heaven will look like, filled with music and songs and a cool breeze on a warm day underneath the porch tree with an audience to listen to her sing. . (To be continued) 📸 @mario_ruben_ #release #diademuertos #writeonthespot #writemore #picsnpens #quebajo #latinx #latinafeminist #latinablogger #Abuelas #latina #latinxwriters #writer #writing #dayofthedead (at Barranquilla, Colombia)
