NATIONAL PROFILE AT A RESTING PLACE, SPACE IS DEDICATED TO SUPPORT AND CARE. PHOTO BY ORLANDO JAYARE. Dizon’s approach to running ARP reflects his own grief practice. For him, dignity, self-determination, and agency are pillars for visitors to expand on their grief and go about it in a way that feels true to themselves. One of the many influences on how ARP serves the community stems from the Filipino Indigenous concept of kapwa. This core belief in Filipino culture embraces the importance of interconnectedness. Whether it is with another person or the environment someone is in, kapwa links humanity NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO A RESTING PLACE IS INFO ON HOURS, OFFERINGS AND WHAT VISITORS CAN EXPECT DURING THEIR TIME THERE. PHOTO BY ORLANDO JAYARE. CID CULTURAL GRIEVING CENTER GIVES SPACE TO HEAL — BUT FOR HOW LONG? BY ORLANDO JAYARE A RESTING PLACE (ARP) is a grief and cultural resource center nestled in Seattle’s historic Chinatown-International District where the idea of grief is reframed. In Western culture, grief is often interlinked with a feeling of dread. The word itself brings to mind a specific loss of life, mortality, and impermanence. The idea of sitting with the discomfort of grief may unsettle anyone from fully recognizing that this emotion is part of a normal, healthy, and universal human experience. At ARP, grief is approached not only as a personal experience but also as its own ecosystem. Visitors are given many opportunities to interact with their grief upon entering the space. ARP provides free resources including grief counselors, poetry, art, a grief library, and letter writing, as well as community-oriented events. In early March, a GoFundMe was started to financially support the organization. Derek Dizon, artist, social worker, and organizer of ARP, has been funding the center since the beginning. However, he says that after eight months of being open, it became clear this was not going to be feasible in the long term. Dizon hopes pursuing crowdfunding will ensure that ARP can stay open and provide free community-centered grief support in Seattle for years to come. The campaign has a goal of raising $100,000 by July, with the funds going toward rent and venue repairs as well as program and operational costs, according to Dizon. “I also want to start paying co-facilitators to start hosting grief support groups. These funds give me an opportunity to do a lot more than it [ARP] being a standalone space, but offering programming that’s in relationship with community,” Dizon says. Since opening on June 10, 2023, ARP has served more than 1,000 community members. While there are some who come with the intention of expressing their grief, other visitors may not be ready to cross that bridge yet. Dizon says that some would walk through the door and not realize what the space represented, and that the diversity of guests that ARP has received shows how the space meets people where they are in their journey with their emotions. “I think we can have the choice for how we want to live our life. How we want to experience our emotions, our heart, our mind, our spirits,” he says. THERE ARE MANY WAYS COMMUNITY MEMBERS VISITING A RESTING PLACE CAN HONOR THE ONES THEY GRIEVE. A LETTER WRITING STATION ALLOWS FOR MORE CONNECTEDNESS. PHOTO BY ORLANDO JAYARE. instead of separating it. “When I think about kapwa, I think about the literal space that facilitates interconnectedness,” Dizon says. “It can also mean understanding yourself in the other person. It’s almost as random as that; it’s a shared sense of interconnectedness.” He says that kapwa is culturally tied to the Philippines and the Indigenous folks from there. “It enables us to have a really deep sense, beyond empathy.” According to Dizon, kapwa is a way to describe how grief is an individual experience kept in the body while also being interconnected with all that surrounds a person. “So, it’s not just between you and I, but maybe me and my dog, maybe my partner, but it’s also the tree outside. Also the air in between me and the tree outsides that I’m connecting to. The particles of water that’s in the air that connects me to the sky,” Dizon said. “Through grief, what does that mean? If we think of it [through] the lens of grief, then if I understand my grief in relation to this sense of interconnectedness, then what does it mean to connect to my environment that is grieving?” ARP reminds visitors to experience grief through their own volition. The space, as described by Dizon, gives people the power to use their imagination and shape their own grief’s journey. The expansiveness allows room for what feels right and good for each person. Additionally, it allows them to feel connected to the environment. Dizon says that grieving not only becomes a vehicle powered through natural human emotion but also serves as a tool for social justice. “For us to be free from violence, we have to be free from the systems that create the conditions for violence to happen. For us to grieve in a safe way, we have to dismantle the systems that cause us to experience violence,” he says. “To me, grief really teaches us that we have to be slow, but we have to be slow and also powerful at the same time in deconstructing and fighting back these systems that take away our grief from us. I believe grief is our power.” This is why Dizon chose to forge ARP and hopes to raise funds to maintain the space. “I appreciate the power of A Resting Place because it does help slow down things for me and understand my purpose and my life in a more intentional way,” he says. ■ Courtesy of Real Change / INSP.ngo August 2024 DENVER VOICE 5
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