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

Tunde Lasode has an upcoming concert, Audience of One: Tribute to the King, on Friday October 18th at Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, Ca. Our conversation has stretched and tested me, and you might be surprised at the differentiation he makes between being a follower of Jesus vs. being religious. We talk about the weight of importance of faith, hope and love, and grief as a call to attention.

Tunde Lasode is a producer, a prolific saxophonist, a pianist and multi-instrumentalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California. He is a Registered Nurse with one of California’s and the United States leading healthcare institutions and has won multiple awards including the Nightingale Award and the Daisy Award for exceptional nurses. Tunde Lasode, also known as t-Las, is an exceptional musician, who balances music with healthcare, using music as an alternative therapy in his healthcare and healing profession. According to him, music plays a pivotal role in healing, both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It also promotes mental health and wellness. He has many experiences performing music therapy at clinics, hospitals, and nursing homes across California, and has seen first hand, the healing power of God through music. As a telemetry nurse, he has learned that music can affect human physiology positively or adversely, depending on the type of music (worthy of note is that research is still ongoing in this area). He was also part of a group that conducted research on the effect of music on delirium in hospitalized older adults.

Over the past decade, he has raised bands and performed across the state and the country, produced and executive produced musical videos and concerts.

In what he describes as a ‘new beginning’, Tunde Lasode (t-Las), a lover of God and follower of Christ, released his debut gospel instrumental album in 2022, titled Audience of One. Having experienced first hand the divine healing  power of God through his music, his goal is to dedicate his gift to the glory and praise of the One who is truly deserving of it,  our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and to continue to promote healing and deliverance from bondage, oppression, and depression, through his saxophone playing. According to him, "music is as powerful as the power and driving force behind it, and the power of the Holy Spirit is the driving force behind my music". This same power raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 6:10-11).

YouTube

Facebook

IG

- God teaching him how to play music instead of being "self taught"

- The homemade guitar his friend made him when he was 7 years old

- Resistance of God's gifts

- How he manifested his upcoming performance

- His brother says he's "speaking the soothing word of God through his instrument"

- His relationship with grief as a nurse and empath

- Yearning for the source of the infinite, the creator

- Faith and what do you get from it

- Hope as a loaded word, especially in grief

- Grief as a call to attention

- The difference between Christianity as a religion vs. Christianity as a relationship with Christ

- Manmade grief due to greed, not God

- The time he saw angels in a cloud of glory during his wilderness period

- Meditate to hear God

- Love is a choice...Love is God

- The context of the story of The Good Samaritan

- Be the hand of God

- Evidence of the things unseen (like dreams)

- Being a "Doubting Thomas" amid God's unconditional love

- Things that we hold onto that Jesus said were inconsequential

- I share how I reframe h8 by staring at photos of certain people as children

- Song: "Be a Fence " by The Anointed Pace Sisters

- Black tourmaline

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. 

Episode 15: Kitchen Table Talk - Ancestral Connection provides an overview into my experiences of building relationships with my ancestors. In episode 14 with Veronica Wells-Puoane, we spoke about her very easy, immediate ability to relate with her grandmother after she crossed over. For those of us who might have to put more effort into interacting with our ancestors, I wanted to share musings about different types of ancestors (blood line, milk line and story line) and a few anecdotes about how I've developed connection with those various folks. I have dozens of other stories to tell about connecting with my ancestors, so this will surely be an ongoing topic.

Below are some of the books, podcasts and people that I reference in the episode, or who have helped influence my understanding of connecting with ancestors.

Card pull from The Hoodoo Tarot

The Body is Not an Apology - Sonya Renee Taylor

My Grandmother's Hands - Resmaa Menakem

Rest is Resistance - Tricia Hersey

Thérèse Cator

Take Back the Magic - Perdita Finn

Women Who Run with Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Gifts - Laura Lynne Jackson

Ancestral Medicine - Daniel Foor

Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Crystal Bible by Judy Hall

Crystal Basics - Nicholas Pearson

Why Shamanism Now Podcast

The Numinous Podcast 

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Clairvoyant Podcast

The Spirit Underground Podcast

What a joy to have Veronica Wells-Puoane on the podcast! We speak about her enchanting Jamaican grandmother Miss Leanora Johnson, as written about in her multi-generational book Bettah Days. Veronica's relationship with grief is not woeful; her grandmother is very present in her everyday life, so they've maintained a connection that hasn't warranted a lot of sadness. But Miss Leanora life had plenty of grief and we discuss all of it, from an unsatisfactory marriage to immigration. Veronica and I laugh a lot in this episode and her grandmother's magic showed up for me even before we started recording.

Veronica Wells-Puoane is a woman striving to live as the most authentic version of herself. It’s a feat that has become increasingly challenging as she navigates motherhood, re-imaginging her career and making time to take care of herself. 

Veronica has devoted her life and career to telling the stories of Black women. She is the author of Bettah Days, a memoir about her late grandmother, and You’ll Be All Write, a question and answer journal for Black women. These days, as she works on healing, getting in touch with her inner child and liberation, she is focusing on narratives about girlhood and sexuality.

- Grandmother Leanora orchestrating her own death

- The different ways grief shows up

- Casket reveals

- Planning your own funeral

- Cleaning up your emotional affairs before death

- Telling her family's story with respect 

- Receiving messages in waking life

- Veronica and her uncle being curing from childhood illnesses (thru folk wisdom and dreams)

- Babies with respiratory issues 

- A red cardinal visitation

- The alignment of "Connie" from the last episode and this one

- Khus Khus herb and perfume

- Daughters come to teach (and straight talk runs in the family)

- The plant clipping from Jamaica

- Her dad's relationship with his mother-in-law

- Grandmother vetting her children's love interests

- On self-sovereignty: "Be the type of free that she (grandmother) couldn't be"

- Red finger nails

- The sex talk my grandmother gave me

- The immigrant way of "keep moving"

- The ring her grandmother received

- Veronica's favorite dish that her grandmother would make, beans and wieners

- Current dreams (and the family dog)

- Our loved ones on the other side WANT to connect with us

- Our power comes from being spiritually connected

- Yt folks and ancestors connection (or the lack thereof)

- Perpetrators of racism and THEIR loss of humanity

- How Veronica and I first connected

- Biases in academia

- Stripping off the need for acceptance from yt folks

- Black women looking out for Black women

Bettah Days

You'll Be All Write Journal 

No Sugar No Cream Magazine

Mahalia Jackson's If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again

All Black Sweatshirt

Enjoy Your Vagina

The Perfect Amount of Cream

Colorism⁠

Sobonfu Somé

Malidoma Somé 

Outlander "Wool Waulking Song"