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cover of episode Carla Fernandez On Navigating ‘The Wild Ride’ of Grief

Carla Fernandez On Navigating ‘The Wild Ride’ of Grief

2025/3/14
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Carla Fernandez
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Leslie McClurg
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Leslie McClurg: 哀伤是复杂的，它以一种不可预测且痛苦的方式袭来，通常持续的时间比我们希望的更长。Carla Fernandez在她的新书中提供了处理哀伤的具体步骤，帮助人们在失去中找到社区、创造仪式，甚至激发快乐。我希望能够帮助我的亲戚减轻痛苦，或者至少帮助他们理解这种失去。 Carla Fernandez: 我在21岁时失去了父亲，这段经历为我后来的工作奠定了基础。我在父亲被诊断为脑癌后，搬回家照顾他，这段经历让我意识到哀伤并不止于葬礼后的40天。我在朋友中是第一个经历重大失去的人，发现很多支持小组的成员年龄较大，无法理解我的经历。我渴望找到一个温暖、人性的空间来处理哀伤，类似于历史上人们围绕哀伤聚集、庆祝和宴会的传统。在文化中，我们常常感受到一种压力，要求我们尽快走出哀伤，专注于未来。我与朋友Lennon Flowers共同创办了“The Dinner Party”，通过晚餐聚会让人们分享失去的故事。在第一次晚餐聚会上，每个人都带来了一道菜，代表他们失去的人，通过食物介绍那个人。晚餐聚会逐渐发展壮大，人们通过口口相传加入，最终形成了一个支持网络。

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Carla Fernandez discusses her personal journey with grief after losing her father to brain cancer and how it inspired her to co-found The Dinner Party, a community for young adults to share and process grief.
  • Carla Fernandez lost her father to brain cancer at 21, which deeply impacted her life.
  • Traditional support groups felt inadequate for young adults like her.
  • Fernandez co-founded The Dinner Party to create a supportive space for young adults to share their grief.
  • The initiative began with informal dinners in San Francisco and has grown significantly since.
  • The first dinner party was like a 'blind date' where participants brought dishes representing their lost loved ones.

Shownotes Transcript

Through years of hosting dinner parties with fellow grievers, Carla Fernandez, writes that she learned to approach grief without sweeping it under the rug. “I learned about approaching grief less as a noun, a thing to distance ourselves from, and more as a verb,” as she writes in her new book, “Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss.” Fernandez lost her father to brain cancer when she was 21. Well after the funeral and support tapered off, she realized she wasn’t done grieving and didn’t have an outlet for her experiences, so she co-founded The Dinner Party in 2014 to bring other young adults together to share food and process grief. Fernandez joins us to talk about how to navigate grief as an ongoing journey.

Guest:

**Carla Fernandez, **co-founder, The Dinner Party; author of the book “Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life After Loss.”