Ep. 5 - Mija, Eso También Es Grief: Losing People, Plans, and Parts of Yourself

Grief Is a Wound We Inherit: Exploring personal and ancestral grief in our culture.

Episode Description:
In this deeply personal and healing episode, we explore the many faces of grief through the lens of Latinx and Latina millennial experiences. From mourning loved ones to grieving lost versions of ourselves, we open up about how our cultural identity, family dynamics, and generational expectations shape the way we process pain and loss. Whether you're navigating fresh grief or carrying ancestral sorrow, this episode holds space for your story.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

🎙️ Grief Beyond the Personal: Collective and Cultural Grief in a World on Fire

Grief isn’t only about losing a loved one. For many Latinas and Latinx millennials, it’s about watching the world burn while being told to carry on with strength and silence. It’s grief in layers—personal, historical, and inherited. Here are some reflections:

🇺🇸 ICE Raids & Anti-Immigrant Policies:

✊🏽 Protests & Uprisings in the U.S.:

🇵🇸 Palestine, Global Liberation, and Shared Struggles:

🧬 Why This Grief Feels So Heavy for Us:

• We carry our own lived traumas and the historical wounds of our ancestors—enslaved, erased, exiled.
• Many of us are first-generation everything, trying to heal in real time while holding our families together.
• The world asks us to be strong, not soft—to survive, not feel. But grief needs space. Silence doesn’t save us. Naming grief is a form of resistance.

🖤 What Does Grief Look Like For Us?

• Grief for humanity and the current events in the world
• Personal stories of loss — from the sudden to the slow and expected.
• How grief showed up in unexpected places: body, sleep, parenting, spirituality.
• The cultural silence around grieving and how it affects our healing process.

🌺 How Our Latina Identity Shapes Our Grief

• Expectations of strength, silence, and being the caretaker.
• The influence of faith, ritual, and family dynamics.
• Intergenerational grief and how we carry stories not told.

🌧️ Different Types of Grief

• Sudden vs. long-term grief — what each teaches us.
• Losing a parent, caregiver, or grandparent and the unique heartbreak it brings.
• The grief of losing yourself — to trauma, survival mode, or caregiving.
• Moms grieving quietly while holding it all together.
• Collective grief: mourning for a world in crisis (violence, climate, injustice).

💬 How We Cope

• Therapy, journaling, ancestral practices, community circles, and rest.
• Making space for joy and grief to coexist.
• How language and Spanglish help us process emotions that don’t always translate.

❤️‍🩹 Why We Need to Talk About This More

• Honoring grief as sacred, not shameful.
• Breaking cycles of silence so the next generation has tools to heal.
• Creating culturally grounded, emotionally open spaces for healing.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• ⁠Latinx therapy directories⁠

• ⁠Books and poetry on grief by Latinx authors⁠

• Community healing circles and virtual support groups

• Immigrant Rights Resources and Support

Listener Invitation:
Have a grief story you want to share? DM us or send a voice note to be featured in a future episode. Your voice matters.