Tida Beattie

Tida Beattie and Soyeon Davis are peer grief support facilitators with a focus on cultural bereavement resulting from migration and intergenerational grief. They construct and facilitate labyrinths that integrate nature as a multi-sensory tool for reflection, reconnection, and remembrance in the alchemy of grief. Both are trained end-of-life doulas, co-founders of MESO, and proud daughters of kick-ass immigrants. (We made this short but we can say more if you want us to.)

What was the catalyst for you stepping into this work? How did you end up here, at this moment, doing what you do?

My dad and mom died in 2019. Both their rapid declines came as complete surprises. They were only 80, which is young for elderhood. I thought they had more time here and that in itself was me taking life for granted. As my dad entered the last 2 weeks of his life, in hospice in a skilled nursing facility, I was completely overwhelmed by our situation and my thorough ignorance. I could not at all process what was happening and was present with my dad as best as I could be. I kept reaching out to all and any people who entered the room, these "caregivers", for information and was met with efficient indifference as my father left this world. After my mom died 5 weeks later, I entered a freefall black abyss of complex grief. As I desperately navigated grief support resources, I felt myself becoming even more alienated and silent amongst these groups. There was no space, no mirrors, and no windows for my experience as an immigrant daughter who had just lost both her parents and all ties to a heritage and a culture that both defined and eluded me.

After being an insufficient long-distance caregiver, an immediate witness to the death of my parents, and a daughter who had become unmoored from aspects of life experience and self-identity, I've had to reckon with all of these shards. Going through the grief and trauma, allowing it - that was my process of re-orienting, reconnecting and rebuilding a new self and new world in the wake of my devastating losses. My process entailed training as an end-of-life doula, as a hospice volunteer, and offering community-focused peer grief support circles for intergenerational families over the last 5 years as part of a company I co-founded, MESO. Along the way, I came to better understand why my perceived loss of culture and heritage that was embodied through my parents was also such a tremendous loss for me as it's common of cultural bereavement. So that's led me to raising awareness of cultural bereavement, a form of disenfranchised grief, and most recently offering labyrinths as a pathway for grief and remembrance.

What do you hope people get from working with you or interacting with your services?

I am the child of immigrants and my work has focused on bringing the experience of immigrant families and their next generations around aging, dying, death and grief to more light. It is a little bit different today because of two critical things - the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd- but when I was trying to find accessible resources, there was little that I felt was relatable because I couldn't find real stories from the perspective of an immigrant family. Since 2020, I tell my own story in the hopes it gives other children of diaspora permission to raise his/her voice too. I hope that people can find a kinship in similar aspects of our migration histories and our states of being. It's the recognition of me, in you and vice versa. We're not actually alone and we can find resources, solace, and witness to our most vulnerable, whole individual and communal selves. 

Hopefully, this kinship is fortifying and nourishing and that being seen, heard, and witnessed is powerful. People need this support in order to find their way with meeting grief. Which is actually about meeting oneself. I believe it can be an incredible journey, perhaps one of the most challenging. I believe that grief can be one of our greatest teachers because it has the power to illuminate what is most important. From there, we can define a pathway of possibility and hope.

What do you wish was different about the way we are supported when dying, grieving, and navigating end-of-life in general? What would you change?

Humanity's greatest challenge isn't AI or anything deemed its greatest challenge ever before. Humanity's greatest challenge is recognizing and honoring itself. In our own selves first and from there, in others. This is fundamental. What I wish was different is the universal understanding that we are one humanity. Recognizing that, I believe it should be a right that we are born and we die with dignity, compassion, warmth, security, free of pain, and peace.

I understand that we can't choose but as an advanced society that has been around for 250,000 years, we are not close to this, not at all. However, if the possible provision of such conditions was our priority, it would drive change across the board for dying, grieving, and end-of-life care. 

How do we begin to affect such change? I believe it's in raising our voices. After having to endure terrible circumstances, familes are exhausted. They don't want to talk, they can't. And stories get buried, go underground, their wounds fester. We then stuff and continue to bury our pain, our grief and make ourselves sick. Finding our voice and sharing our stories allows for much needed release and possibly support. It can serve as a model to others, becoming a source of permission to stand up, an outlet through which to share and express, and a place of reflection, strength and recognition for others. It starts there.

What would you say to someone who is nervous about attending events about death or grief?

It's normal to be nervous! Confronting mortality - whoa! Reckoning with the rollercoaster of grief - oomph! Both grief and death are so shoved under our society's rug that of course, there's nervousness. We are an age-defying, death denying, grief phobic society so when societal messages remove death from life and grief has no place with the happiness industrial complex, we need to give ourselves some grace for being apprehensive.

From there, I'd say brava for being curious! Lean into that and allow curiosity to keep you open and asking questions. 

If someone meets you at the resource fair - what's a question you invite them to ask you? 

What am I saying 100% YES to?