Welcome to the show the colorful and incomparable Ms. Funke. She opens the conversation by telling how she starts her day with her Ifà practices, and how she consulted the Yoruba Orisha Ògún before bringing her beloved dog, Cognac, home.

Her fear of death was transformed through Buddhism, Reiki and caring for her parents at the end of their lives. Her parents met when her father was a Tuskegee airmen grounds crew and her mother a USO dancer. The blessing her mother bestowed upon her has carried her throughout her colorful life: "live life on your own terms." And that was her guiding light when she was diagnosed with (and given a clean bill of health from) colon cancer, along with the quality of her life centered.

Ms. Funke speaks about "letting go" as a way to not hold onto grief and connecting with ancestors of good character for guidance (a cherished aunt makes an appearance!). She also explains why she uses the term "transitioned" instead of "died".

She's been initiated as a living ancestor into Ifà, and gives instructions for how we can connect to our ancestors, which is an integral to her wisdom and practice. What's nurtures her? Mother Earth!

Ms. Funke says "my bio is very simple: I am someone that loves life and believes in staying true to one's self" and has graciously shared a prayer for all of us:

A Prayer Connecting to Mother Earth:

I am grounded

My spirit is grounded deep into the earth

I am calm, strong, centered and peaceful

I am able to let go of fear and trust that I am eternally safe

I am worthy of all things beautiful

Àṣẹ

Ifà

LA Times Article with Ms. Funke's father and his childhood friend

Tuskegee Airmen Ground Crew

History of Tuskegee Airmen

Skippers Darling 3

The Tuskegee Airmen Red Tails

Nichiren Buddhism

Reiki

Hospice

What a fun conversation this is with artist and death doula Brianna L. Hernández. Brianna shares a few stories about her mom, Miss Sylvia, including her sense of humor and her complicated relationship with cooking. We actually recorded on Miss Sylvia's birthday, so that was really special. Brianna talks about being a grief-y kid and her multimedia art installations that have been born out of caretaking her mom. She also shares some of the things that have become really important to her, like the artist's role in creating cultural death rituals and death education. See below for links to her art installations, articles and Ma's House Art Studio.

Brianna L. Hernández is a Chicana artist, curator, and death doula guided by socially engaged practices. In the studio, she creates multi-media installations focused on end-of-life care, grief, and mourning rituals based on lived experience, cultural research, and collaborations with peers including death education workshops. She proudly serves as Director of Curation and Board Secretary of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, and as Assistant Curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, New York.

Website

Ma's House Residency and BIPOC Art Studio

Anticipatory|Después
Útiles Curativos
Aquí Descansamos
Going with Grace Death Doula Program

Hypoallergenic article

Instagram

- death education

- emotional public expressions of grief

- burials that are better for the environment

- healing our relationship with death and dying through creativity

- cooking for and caretaking for her mom, Miss Sylvia

- Miss Sylvia's sense of humor

- creating a living cemetery

- the way she approaches making matcha

- no difference between love and grief

- "mix to combine"

In this episode, I have a sincere and heartfelt conversation with my friend and artist Nancey B. Price. She shares about her relationship with the land, the smell of peanut dust, mothering the mothers and honoring the fathers. She names collage art and writing as portals and large parts of her grieving process. It's a beautiful conversation with a lot of depth and soul as well as a lot of plenty of laughter and jokes. It's also an invitation to you, the listener, to come to this interview with intentional, sacred listening and divine witnessing.

Nancey B. Price is a Black, queer collage artist, writer and storyteller from rural Georgia with an appreciation for all things Black, Southern and imaginative. In her creative pursuits, she seeks to build worlds in which Black people can exist freely in all their beauty and complexity. As a visual artist, she's exhibited her artwork across the country and has been featured in various publications, including O, the Oprah Magazine, Garden&Gun Magazine, and Black Collagists: The Book. In her stories of fiction, Nancey invokes magical realism and southern gothic storytelling to build worlds and weave together lives inspired by the folklore and oral histories of her hometown, Girard, GA. Furthermore, she has shared stories on Hoodoo Plant Mamas and You Had Me At Black, and as the executive producer and host of the podcast, Dreaming In Color with Nancey B. Price, she highlights the importance of dream-telling in the Black community by creating a safe space for each of her guests to share a dream story and deconstruct its meaning in their waking lives.

Instagram

Dreaming in Color Podcast

Website

- dreaming

- peanut dust smell

- her relationship with the land and the land keeping her safe

- seasons

- how her dog, Olivia, fell out of the sky

- when she became a full-time artist

- intergenerational transference of knowledge

- mothering the mothers

- honoring the men
- The Grounding

- The Seedling

- art as a portal & and as a grieving process

- visitations (or there lack thereof)

- Girdles and wigs

- Whose hair she got

- Grandma Essie

- "making do"

- what's nourishing her body right now

- GMO foods

- her favorite fruit

- The Great British Baking Show

- boiled peanuts

- nicknames

- just "sit in it"

In this solo episode, I share my mission statement as well as the inspiration for the new artwork (via crystal divination) as Recipes for Grief has crossed the one year mark. I talk about how I've been in a food funk, my Grandmother's sometimes inconsistencies and paradoxes, and introduce "Feelings About Food", fun new mini episodes coming soon.

- When We Meet Someone in Deep Grief poem

- New artwork + crystal divination

- My personal + professional mission statement

- Disassociation + embodiment

- Listening to elders and wisdom keepers

- Living in a backwards world

- The possibility for each of us to die well

- My Grandmother, religion, racism and paradox

- What's coming up for Recipes for Grief

- Instagram

Episode 18 brings the waters. Tiffany Joseph introduces herself and her children and shares what she saw when she watched her grandmothers. She also speaks on grief, responsibility and safety. It's much more of a presentation than an interview, and a true honor and delight to share this with you.

Tiffany Joseph is Saltwater Salish of Saanich, Squamish, and Cowichan ancestry. Her work involves feminism and environmentalism through a Coast Salish lens of feminine and non-feminine as is reflected in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and SENĆOŦEN language.

- Tiffany introduces herself

- honoring children

- grandmothers

- astrology - Placidus vs. Whole House systems

- adult-cry

- Indigenous people tending their own lands

- The 60's and 90's scoop

- the feminine and non-feminine

- responsibility

- safety

- rage

- grief

- The Cowichan Sweater: Our Knitted Legacy - trailer

- Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Dr. Joy Degruy

- Andy Paull as I Understood Him and His Times by Herbert Dunlop

Joél Simone Maldonado (aka The Grave Woman) joins Recipes for Grief podcast to discuss Black funeral and food traditions. As we chat, you can really hear us deepening into curiosity, trust and friendship as we venture into the ethics of preserving family stories and AI, as well as the ethics of intuition in death care. Another thing we discuss is how on her podcast, Death & Grief Talk with The Grave Woman, she'll highlight television and movies about death and grief (with a few recommendations). We also talk about the prominence of alcohol on reality tv and discuss how our relationship with alcohol has changed recently.

Joél Simone Maldonado aka The Grave Woman is a sacred end of life and grief care professional, award winning educator and founder of The Black Death, Grief, and Cultural Care Academy. She specializes in educating professionals about the importance of Cultural Competency, Racial Inclusion and Diversity in end of life, death and grief care.

Joél has worked in the death care industry since 2010 and has over 15 years experience in the healthcare industry. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Compassion and Choices as co-chair of the board's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee and volunteers with the African American Leadership Council.
Joél educates the public through having open and honest conversations about death, dying, death care and grief culture through the use of my courses, podcast, YouTube channel and social media platforms.

- Black funeral food traditions

- The responsibility and grief of digitizing recordings of our elders

- Death care as intuitive work and alchemy

- Receiving messages from the dead in death work

- The ethics of psychic abilities and giving messages to people

- Embodying the gift of divination

- AI, nanotechnology and death care

- AI and mass consciousness after death

- Animating photos of the death and AI communication with the dead

- Space burial

- The Ancient Egyptians and the circle of necessity

- Joel's prophetic dreams

- Being "death curious" and curious in general

- Spoiler Alert movie trailer

- Don't Worry Darling movie trailer

- Black Mirror

- Love is Blind

- Alcohol (spirits, the death care profession, The Housewives...)

- Portals, death and rebirth

- Dancing, stretching, drumming...resistance and grace on the journey

- Joel's (many) offerings as guidance from Spirit

Say the Holy Rosary in French Creole with Mother Dumas.

Alberta (Gauthier) Dumas Robinson was born in Opelousas, Louisiana in 1902. She and her family moved to Beaumont, Texas in the early 1930's, then later migrated to Oakland, California in the 1950's.

She was known for her prayerful spirit; most Sundays after church, the priests from St. Patrick's Catholic Church in West Oakland would join the family for Sunday supper. She would often cook foods like gumbo and rice, collard greens, chicken fricassee, spaghetti and green beans...and there was always cake in the cake pan on top of the refrigerator.

In this recording, she's teaching her youngest grandchild Andrea (me!) the rosary in her first language, French Creole, in about 1983. I only had a short clip recorded on cassette tape, so this audio has been edited to complete the full rosary. Grandmother would say the rosary 3 times a day, but once a day is okay.

Mother Dumas died in 2001 at the age of 99 years young.