Choosing How We Carry Relationships Forward

By Donna Zajonc

In Mexico, where I spend my winter months, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a beautiful celebration of the connection between the living and those who have died. Families create ofrendas, or altars, with photographs, candles, flowers, favorite foods, and meaningful objects to honor loved ones. They share stories, remember, and celebrate lives that remain part of their own.

At its heart, The Empowerment Dynamic (TED*)® is about relationships: how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to our circumstances.  As Creators, we can ask ourselves what we want to continue honoring about a relationship after someone dies. What did we learn about love, courage, or being human? And how might we carry something forward from our time together?

Last year at this time, I wrote about the experience of losing my adult son ​(Remembering the Life of My Son)​ and the death of David Emerald, my longtime partner and co-founder of The Center for The Empowerment Dynamic ​(Remembering Our Dear Friend and Creator David Emerald). Each loss brought its own grief and its own unique relationship in life and death.

Mexican families celebrate their loved ones with warmth and openness. Here, death isn't locked away in private grief. It's woven into life through flowers, favorite foods, music, and altars that tell stories about those who have died. There is so much laughter mixed with tears. Rather than focusing only on the absence of their loved ones, this tradition makes space for the relationships that continue.

I find these rituals and teachings both comforting and profound. The people we love become part of us. We carry our memories, their wisdom, their laughter, and sometimes the pain of unfinished conversations. Their continued presence within our hearts influences us in how we see the world, how we love others, and how we live our lives.

Like all meaningful relationships, our relationships with those who have died ask us to be present to all of our feelings. We may experience sadness, longing, gratitude, regret, anger, or even relief.  Sometimes these feelings arrive together, and we don't quite know what to do with them.

It's tempting to push painful feelings away, stay busy, or tell ourselves we should have moved on by now. I know that is the case for me, especially since the unexpected death of my adult son.  I have learned that grief is not a problem to solve with a timetable or something we simply “get over.”  Grief reflects the significance of our relationship and the reality that something precious has changed.

Being present means allowing ourselves to acknowledge what we feel without judging ourselves by feeling it. We don't have to make the loss positive or find a lesson in every painful experience.

Día de los Muertos offers a reminder that remembering can be an act of connection. We can tell stories, look at photographs, revisit meaningful places, or participate in rituals that help us honor someone we love. We can hold both the pain of their absence and the gratitude that they were part of our lives.

The Empowerment Dynamic offers a useful perspective on how we relate to loss. Although we cannot change the reality of death, we can become more aware of how we respond to it and how we want to carry our relationships forward.

Our relationships are part of the life we are creating. Through awareness, compassion, and choice, The Empowerment Dynamic helps us remain in a loving relationship with those who have died while continuing to participate fully in the life we are presently living.

Perhaps one of the gifts of Día de los Muertos is its reminder that love and loss are not opposites. We grieve because we have loved. We remember because a relationship mattered. And we continue to carry that relationship forward in ways both visible and unseen.

Until next time, here's to the Creator in you,

Donna