FSN NEWS RELEASE
Family Strengths Network invites families and their teens to come celebrate El Día de los Muertos and learn more about our newly formed teen grief group, the Space Between, on the evening of Oct. 29 from 6-7:30 pm at 3540 Orange Street. Join special guest Los AlamosHigh School Spanish teacher Maria Romero in creating a community altar (ofrenda) to honor our loved ones. This annual cultural holiday recognizes the importance of commemorating our losses in community and celebrating the lives of our loved ones. Attendees are invited to bring a photo or other item representing their loss to add to the ofrenda.
The Space Between: a Safe Place for Teens Navigating Loss is a group facilitated by Kristine Coblentz and Rumi Sauñe that is designed to help teens process their grief through games, creative activities, and sharing. The group uses resources from the Grief Center’s curriculum which is based on William Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning:
1) to accept the reality of the loss,
2) to process the pain of grief,
3) to adjust to a world without the deceased, and
4) to find an enduring connection with the deceased while embarking on a new life.
Teens who have experienced a significant loss are welcome to join the group at any time (1st and 3rd Thursdays from 6-7:30 pm at 3540 Orange Street). To help with planning, participants are asked to register ahead of time at https://www.lafsn.org/support-groups. Recognizing the need for safe places for teens to acknowledge and work through significant losses, the Space Between grief group started in the fall of 2026 with funding from the Anchorum Foundation through the Los Alamos Community Foundation.
El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has deep roots in Indigenous traditions and has developed over centuries through the blending of Indigenous practices with Spanish Catholic observances, particularly All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Today, the tradition continues to evolve in Mexico and Latin America and among Latino communities in the United States. Cynthia Vidaurri, folklorist and researcher at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, shares, “In its most basic sense, Day of the Dead is an act of remembrance. It serves a human need to be connected with departed loved ones”.
Families and communities who celebrate El Día de los Muertos welcome the spirits of the deceased by creating altars or ofrendas in memory of their loved ones. The brightly decorated altars often include photos, images of beloved activities, and the kinds of food and drink the person enjoyed as well as symbolic items like candles, marigolds, papel picado (colorful paper banners), pan de muerto (bread baked in the shape of a skull), and sugar skulls. Families also visit cemeteries to clean and decorate their loved ones’ graves and share favorite foods and memories of their time together. In these ways, El Día de los Muertos is a time to honor thecycle of life and to celebrate the lives of the deceased.
More information, educational resources, and images of el Día de los Muertos can be found from the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian Learning Lab at: https://latino.si.edu/learn/teaching-and-learning-resources/day-dead-resources and
https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/day-of-the-dead-learning-kit/E1hWiAVMTjoaIOQm
More information about Family Strengths Network’s Día de los Muertos gathering can be found here