Grief as a Portal with Ella deCastro Baron

Ella talks about the five gates of grief as described by Francis Weller. These gates opened up a way for her to acknowledge ways Filipino Americans and chronically ill folks carry grief in their bodies. First Gate: Everything we love we will lose. Second Gate: The Places that have not known love. Third Gate: The Sorrows of the World. Fourth Gate: What we expected and did not receive. Fifth Gate: Ancestral Grief. Ella describes multiple way of grief tending and shares this quote from Wanda Vision: “what is grief but love persevering.” Ella deCastro Baron is a second-generation Filipina American born and raised in Coastal Miwok territory (Vallejo, California). She is a Voices of Our Nation (VONA) alum, holds an MFA, teaches Composition and Creative Writing at San Diego City College and U Mass, and co-facilitates "Where We Come From: Writing Your Ethnoautobiography" and "To Exist is to Flare: Loving Our Chronically Ill Minds and Bodies" through Corporeal Writing. Ella's first book of creative nonfiction is, Itchy, Brown Girl Seeks Employment, and she's published in Nonwhite and Woman, (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Epidemic, Anomaly, and The Rumpus. Her next book, Subo and Baon: A Memoir in Bites, is coming! As a woman of color who lives with chronic dis-ease, Ella honors sensations, images, story, dance, and decolonial truth-telling. She produces workshops and kapwa (deep interconnection) gatherings that stir love and justice via writing, art, joy, grief-tending, movement, food (yes!) and community. She lives and loves on Kumeyaay territory (San Diego, CA) with her husband and interracial family. Her favorite pronoun is We. Find out more at:  www.elladecastrobaron.com Thank you for letting us be in your ears. Coffee, Grief and Gratitude is a created by Anne Gudger and Maria Gibson, a mom/daughter duo who talk about grief. You can find them on Facebook at Coffee and Grief. Please join their private Facebook page: Coffee and Grief Community where you can also learn more about the five readers on this recording. You can also email Anne and Maria at: [email protected] Anne’s memoir, THE FIFTH CHAMBER, a memoir of loss and love, is just out. You can buy it wherever you get your books. It’s also available on Kindle. Please review THE FIFTH CHAMBER on Amazon and Goodreads. No matter where you bought your copy, you can review it on those sites. Thank you huge for taking the time! Anne will be reading and signing books in Seattle at Nook & Cranny Bookstore on November 29th at 6:30. She’ll be in conversation with Anne Liu Kellor, author of HEART RADICAL. She’d love to meet you! This is Anne’s last scheduled reading, and she hopes you can join her.