Retreats

Mixed Race Meditation
2022 Winter Day-long Retreat

Sunday, December 18th, 2022
10:00am - 5:00pm ET

Reflections from Our community facilitators

“The connection I have to my Filipinx and Sicilian heritage feels like a puzzle with too many missing pieces. I’ve only known one grandparent—my grandmother on my mother’s side—and have heard a few stories and some photographs of the others, all of them passed before I was born. I know even less about the people who came before them. For as long as I can remember, there has been this longing to know more about my ancestors. To see them, smell them, talk to them and understand how I got to where I am today. I haven’t been able to find enough information to build a detailed family tree—my desire for rootedness remains. 

And yet, deep within my being, I know my ancestors because they are me. No matter whether I got to speak to them or hold their hand; they are literally in my DNA. There is something beautiful about reflecting on this, especially in my meditation practice, because each breath I take is like a prayer to those who came before me and those who will come after me. The few things I do know resonate deeply: I come from a family of origin that contains fighters, chefs, artists, nurses, farmers, and builders. Next, I ask myself: “What kind of ancestor do I want to be?””

“When I consider my ancestors, I consider what it might mean to rethink their absence. The absence of answers, of people I have never met, the mourning of what has been lost to the weight of pain, or smothered by trauma. There, in the center of the impossibility of knowing, what once felt insatiable, slowly became a seedling of constant curiosity. For me, unanswerable questions tucked in between the widespread versions of where my Chinese-Trinidadian family came from, became threads I could braid together. The many conflicting stories I came to understand prodded open gaps in my understanding of who they were, and in turn, who I am. These realities of not-knowing used to eat at me and make me feel lost. Slowly, I began to shift the empty spaces in my mind. The many absences of understanding became openings, doors leading to many paths.

In the legacy and mysteries of my family history, I felt something more. I craved to understand, and my desire began to feed my creativity, my stories, my music, and my poetry. I saw who I thought my grandmother could be in fruit markets, on the bus, walking slowly in the park with a soft smile staring at roses, or in an elderly couple with their fingers interlaced, the elderly Chinese woman who wore a red felt hat; they all became her. I felt the materialization of what I couldn’t know as what I instead could choose to experience. There was something so magical and boundless about being a part of her legacy. Though I would never meet her, at least not in this life, I could feel her and imagine who she was and who she might imagine me to be.”