Are you creative? Join us for our Crafting Group. 

Bring any craft you like, get on Zoom with us and visit with your colleagues while

we knit, sew, paint, draw, cook, create, etc. 

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Photo credit: TBSP. "How to Make Sugar Skulls (Calavera de Azúcar)"  (link)

Our listserv has over 400 members on it, and is active daily with great conversations, resources, offerings, in search of, books, movies, office rentals, jobs, internships, etc. You can view the home page of our listserv at https://groups.io/g/recamft.

If you are not currently enrolled in the listserv, please email therapy@recamft.org and ask to be added. You have the option of setting up your account to be 

• Read individual emails
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After you have been added to the listserv, you can change the way you receive the emails to any of the above choices. In Gmail the emails will appear under your Forums tab. To send an email to the listserv, simply address your email to recamft@groups.io

If you do not want to be on our listserv, you can delete your account or write to therapy@recamft.org and ask to not be a part of the listserv. But we urge you to give it a try. You are missing out on a ton of meaningful collaboration with your colleagues. We hope you will enjoy being part of our online community! 

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Honoring Día de los Muertos

By JoAnn Consiglieri, LMFT

As the days get shorter, a new school year begins, leaves begin to Fall and the retail world spotlights Halloween: my thoughts turn to October-Hispanic Heritage Month and Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Our Lady of Guadalupe school in La Habra, CA was the first school in which I taught in 1964. I was there for 7 years. It was there that I was introduced in a very wonderful way to celebrate Día de los Muertos, where death is honored and the person celebrated.

Growing up as a second-generation Italian American in San Francisco my family taught me to respect and love the elders in our family and when those elders died, we celebrated them with a funeral Liturgy and a celebratory gathering meal following the Church Service. Death and dying was a natural phenomenon in our family rather than something hidden or scary. When my mother died, my dad went to her grave weekly bringing flowers from their garden. I joined my dad sometimes, as did my other siblings, and we would visit the graves of all our relatives.

In the 21^st century death has become more apparent in its frequency (maybe because of the widespread media of our age) with climate change, violence and conflict, catastrophes happening all over the world from natural disasters; and in our own country, school shootings, death from racism, misogyny, and hatred and death of 2SLGBTQIA+, a plethora of death.  If there ever was a time when death was not spoken about in families or the very subject of death closeted, it certainly cannot be happening now.

One way to help ease the pain of the death of a loved one is to talk about the person that we have loved and has gone before us. In our speaking, share memories of that person.  What did they love to do, what made them laugh, what made them cry?  Did they make us laugh? How do we apply salve to the broken heart from the experience of so much death in our country, in our world, to us individually?  I believe that observing Día de los Muertos may be one way to begin to apply healing salve.

Mexico City’s museums and public spaces have played an important part in developing and promoting urban Day of the Dead traditions.  This has spread all over the world and from various traditions. California and Mexico are literally adjacent to each other and more importantly some of us live right next door or across the street from our Latine siblings. I do! So, during the coming celebration of the Fall/Autumn of the year, October and November, this holiday tradition will be celebrated on November 1st and 2nd, though other days, such as October 31 or November 6 may be included depending on the locality. Halloween, All Hallows Eve, on October 31st is celebrated today more than ever, even by adults.

In the spring when I plant my vegetables, I also plant numerous marigold flowers known as cempazuchitl. I primarily plant them so I can harvest them in October and November for my Day of the Dead Altar. Their orange and yellow blossoms lend so much beauty and color to my ofrendas (altars). Admittedly a secondary reason, for planting marigolds is they keep bugs away from the vegetables I plant. On my altar are displayed framed pictures of my family members and friends who have died. In October and November, I celebrate these loved ones. I think of them, I hold them close.

The calavera (a word that means skull in Spanish, but has come to mean the entire skeleton) has become one of the most recognizable, cultural and artistic elements of the Day of the Dead festivities.  They are made from wood, paper mache, sugar paste or carved bone and are colorful, happy, joyful, playful celebratory figures. They are given to children especially those made from sugar. It is tasty candy for them on these special days.

A tradition that is new to me to honor the deceased is calaveras literarias which are light-hearted and often irreverent verses in the form of mock epitaphs dedicated to living friends and acquaintances (like limericks entertain in Irish culture). They can allow people to poke fun at the fears many of us have about death, and to take the idea of death in stride.

Pan de Muertos (Wikipedia)

It is also traditional for many families, before laying out the candles, food, flowers and calaveras, to clean the grave and area around the grave as the year-long weather, elements, and birds can cause dirt to accumulate. Candles are also part of traditional altars of Día de los Muertos. When I go to a cemetery on any of these days I will see many flowers, (marigolds included), with families sitting around their loved one’s grave sharing the foods that were most favored by their loved ones, and are still family favorites. Another tradition connected with the holiday is to share traditional Pan de Muerto with family and friends. ¡Que delicioso!

The Press Democrat and other newspapers share the Día de los Muertos celebrations happening around our County. A good book that will offer you more than I have shared is Day of the Dead in the USA: The Migration and Transformation of a Cultural Phenomenon, Second Edition by Regina Marchi. As this celebration centers around family and those who have departed our lives, celebrating this triune of days can be a magnificent way to normalize death and take some of the fear out of death and dying for both adults and children.

Members - you can access recordings of our zoom events from 2023, 2022, and 2021  in our Free CE Library. Watch the video, pass the test, fill out the evaluation, and download your certificate. It's that easy! You can earn CEs for any recorded event if you didn't already earn CEs from the live event. You must be logged in to see the library here: https://www.recamft.org/CE-Video-Library

• Transforming Trauma: The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) for Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resolving Complex Trauma, with Brad Kammer, LMFT
• Affirmative Therapy with Trans/Gender Expansive Clients, with Melle Browning, LMFT 
• Therapy with South Asian American Women, with Shipra Maurya, PsyD 
• Found at Sea: Depth Psychotherapy for Unfathomed Times, with Molly Merson, LMFT 
• Cultural Competency: Working with First Responders, with Dr. Joel Fay, Psy.D. 
• Brainspotting: Trauma Therapy that Works! with Lisa Larson, LMFT 
• And many more!
  

Introducing our On-Demand Store! Now, even non-members can benefit from RECAMFT's extensive CE video library by purchasing select individual video programs in our On-Demand Store. If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out to our friendly support team at therapy@recamft.org. We are here to help!  

You can also visit our On-Demand Store to purchase CE presentations that were not offered free with membership, and it is not required to be a RECAMFT member for purchase: https://www.recamft.org/on-demand-training  We have plans to release more programs to the On-Demand Store in the coming months.

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Find out more about advertising with RECAMFT here. 

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L-R Bob Casanova, Emily Larkin, Linda Block (on screen), Gina Culver, Reyna Seminara, Pat Hromalik, Randy Cheek, Jean Hayes.

"Bringing the Outside in"

By Emily Morrison, LMFT

Autumn is coming. What do you notice inside of yourself as the season shifts? Is there a quieting? A rush to take advantage of the last days of summer? Do you feel nesting desire within? That longing for warm beverages and cozy blankets?

As humans we are deeply influenced by the shift of the seasons, the change in the light and weather. The rhythms of the natural world are part of the fabric of our being. Even amongst concrete and electric lights, the shortening of the days impacts the way we move through our lives and often the way we feel in our bodies.

The cosmic forces influence us as well. The lunar cycle tugs at the tides and most people who work with the public in some capacity can speak to the way a full moon might shift behaviors, emotional intensity or increase in accidents. To quote my 8th grade science teacher who was also an ER nurse, “If you work in the emergency room on a full moon you will begin to see that it makes everyone a little more wild.”

My personal spiritual path is tied to the natural rhythms of the earth and sky and as a result (and my beliefs about our connection to these) I often bring the natural world into my work. Using the seasons as an example, I invite clients to explore their relationship to beginnings, growth and the endings that follow. If the plants don’t rest in the winter they cannot grow again in the spring. As some plants die away, they become nutrients for the plants that follow. So, too, do our life experiences. We need endings to have space for beginnings. Those endings provide compost for what we do next. The moon starts in darkness, grows to fullness, wanes and becomes new once more. We are mirroring these patterns in our lives, through not only our lifespan but all the chapters that lie in between our births and deaths.

The earth offers us other tools as well. Grounding is top of the list for me. Sometimes this looks like helping someone connect to their breath and their body. Sometimes it’s taking them outside to sit at the base of a tree or rest their head upon its trunk. And sometimes it is inviting them to go belly down on the floor and let the earth support them fully, finding surrender in the strength found there. 

The natural world is full of wonder and awe. There is beauty everywhere. When we ask clients to see this, through the flight of a hummingbird or the lush color of a flower, the softness of an animal’s fur or the smell of bay trees in the summer sun, we call them to come back to their senses, to find pleasure in the simplicity of seeing, feeling, smelling and being inside of their skin. This is not always an easy task, nor does it always go as hoped or planned, yet when obstacles arise in our attempts to help clients connect, it is our turn to shift, to grow, to let old plans or attachments to outcome fall away and become compost for our work as well. The natural world holds endless wisdom when we allow ourselves to listen.

Emily Morrison, LMFT has a private practice in Santa Rosa, and is licensed in both Oregon and California. 

Thank you for reading this month's newsletter! RECAMFT is great because of involved members like you!!