The Sensuality of Place and Grief with Roshni Kavate

“There's just something about the air. If you live by the ocean, there's a saltiness in the air. You can smell the fruit every morning as you walk the streets, depending on if it's a market day or what's in season.

So it really grounds you and places you in time, space, memory, where you are, who you're connected with, and what's happening.”

— Roshni Kavate

In this week’s episode, Roshni Kavate speaks with Oceana about how the sensuality of food-ways, family homes and locations can mix and mingle to create soothing balms for grieving. Roshni also does a beautiful job of describing the specific secondary losses that are unique to first and second generation immigrants or expatriates.

Delving deeper into ancestral wisdom can be useful for immigrants as well as first, second and third generation Americans, Kavate says. The question she advises asking: "What in your culture was medicine?"

If it was food-based, this could be answered by eating your grandmother's favorite lamb meatballs, for example, or eating a mango. Kavate encourages people to particularly look into foods that bring you comfort — which could be traditional medicinal food, like stews, beans, rice and lentils. The smell of these foods, Kavate says, can also be powerful.

“Grief is really a calling for more joy and more life,” she said — and it's important for people to “tend” to what is calling us and our bodies. “Our bodies are deeply intelligent and they have intelligence in how to navigate grief," she adds.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11859088/covid-19-and-personal-grief-advice-from-experts

https://www.ripostemagazine.com/grief-and-comfort-food

“I deeply believe that healing and wholeness can be cultivated by reclaiming our ancestral wisdom and sharing an intentional and communal space. Our wholeness and softness can also be our activism.”

https://www.reclamationventures.co/grant-recipients/roshni-kavate

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