How Can Sharing a Meal Help Heal Grief and Loss? An Interview With Lennon Flowers, Part Two

This is part two of SevenPonds’ interview with Lennon Flowers, the founder and executive director of The Dinner Party, a multinational community of individuals working together to open conversations about life after loss. (Read part one here) Founded in December 2013, The Dinner Party started with an impromptu get together in a backyard in Los Angeles and has now expanded to nearly 200 locations worldwide. In this edited interview, Lennon discusses this unique community and shares her personal insights about the transformative power of connection in healing grief and loss.

A Dinner Party Table
(Credit: Jen Patton)

Kathleen: Loss is such a universal experience. Do you have people who join your tables who have gone through losses unrelated to death, such as a miscarriage or divorce?

Lennon Flowers: Absolutely. As the group has expanded, it’s naturally evolved to include men and women who have gone through many different kinds of loss, including things like the loss of a child through miscarriage or stillbirth or the breakup of a long-term relationship. Every loss is traumatic in its own way.

Our goal, again, is not to provide answers, but to give people tools. We believe that every story is different, but our shared experience is what bonds us as humans and helps us grow. When we share our stories, we begin to cut through the B.S. and come to terms with the violence we do to ourselves by censoring and judging and hiding what we feel. It opens up a space where we can begin to live more boldly, to reach out to others in a more meaningful way, and to ask ourselves what it means to live well.

Kathleen: I know that the No. 1 rule at your tables is that you do not give “advice.” But, would you be willing to share some tips with our readers about how they can begin to move forward after a loss?

Lennon: You’re right. I don’t give advice, as a rule. But there are a few things that I would emphasize to anyone who is working towards moving forward after a loss:

First, and most importantly, we are all our own best experts. There are no rules. No one can tell you what or how to feel.

Realize that loss changes you forever, and life will never be as it was before.

There is a cost to living a divided life. Experiencing your pain is part of getting to a place where you can experience joy again.

The Dinner Party Manifesto

Kathleen: OK I’m hooked! How does a person go about joining a table or starting one?

Lennon: The easiest way to join a table is to go to our website and sign up. We have matched thousands of people all over the world with hosts. Dinners are usually held about every eight to 10 weeks, so there’s often a bit of a wait. But we try to get people matched up as quickly as we can.

For those who don’t want to wait to be matched with a table, or if there isn’t a table where they live, we suggest that they set up a table of their own. We provide a very helpful step-by-step host guidebook on our website that they can download for free.

Credit: Kim Creager

Kathleen: Do you charge membership fees or dues?

Lennon: I find that money gets in the way, so we don’t charge a membership fee or dues, and there is no charge to come to a table to sit down and eat. (Our dinners are all pot-luck style.) As of now, we have funded about 70 percent of our work through three Indiegogo campaigns and individual contributions of $15 to $20 each. We are looking at a number of revenue models to help us sustain the organization, but those are still up in the air right now.

Kathleen: Can you tell me what you see in The Dinner Party’s future. What would you like to accomplish? 

Lennon: Right now our goal is to simply keep connecting people and spreading the word that there is life after loss. My hope is that by bringing people together to talk about things like death and loss and grief in these intimate settings we can begin impacting some of the social taboos around talking about them as well. Death is inevitable. Hopefully our tables can help more people come to terms with that and realize that sharing our feelings doesn’t have to be as scary or difficult as we think.

Kathleen: Thank you so much Lennon. It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you! 

Lennon: You’re welcome.