Día de Muertos 2025: How Setting Up an Ofrenda Can Heal and Inspire
Living far from home, I’ve never felt closer to Día de Muertos. Setting up an ofrenda isn’t about mourning, it’s about love, memory, and hope. Here’s how honoring lost loved ones can heal, inspire, and light the way for all of us.
It’s a strange thing to admit, but I’ve never felt closer to Día de Muertos than I do this year. Especially while living in another country, far away from my people, my traditions, and the familiar rhythms of home.
As a Mexican living in the United States, I watch TikTok videos from across the globe, seeing people set up ofrendas for their absent loved ones, and I feel a joy in my heart that I can’t fully put into words. There’s something profoundly moving about seeing people of all backgrounds embrace this tradition, honoring the lives of those who’ve passed, not in mourning, but in celebration.
A Mexican Day of the Dead ofrenda is an altar created to honor and welcome the spirits of those we’ve lost. Each element on the altar carries meaning:
- Photos of those who’ve died invite their spirits to visit.
- Candles light the way back home.
- Marigolds (cempasúchil) guide them with their vibrant color and scent.
- Food and drinks, often their favorites, are offered to nourish their spirits.
- Sugar skulls and pan de muerto remind us that death is part of life’s cycle.
- Personal items or mementos reflect the essence of who they were and what they loved.
It’s a beautiful, tender blend of remembrance, love, and celebration, a night when families come together to share stories, laugh, and feel close to those who are no longer physically with us.
Watching strangers, people I’ll never meet, share ofrendas for their pets, grandparents, or lost friends has moved me beyond words. Like the candles on their altars, it has lit a spark of love, nostalgia, and pride deep in my Mexican soul.
Everything happening in the world right now has left me, as an empath, feeling deeply disappointed, worried, scared, sad, and often hopeless. Yet reconnecting with my roots through other people’s stories and experiences has given me hope in humanity again, a hope I desperately needed to feel.
There’s a unique grief that comes with leaving everything familiar behind, with migrating and uprooting your life. Listening to Emily Kiser talk about her own grief and how she’s learning to live with it made me realize something: we approached it in the same way. If you’ve read my previous articles on depression, you know that a big part of my healing was giving my depression life, befriending it instead of fighting it. Emily, though her grief and my struggles are not the same at all, approaches hers with the same tender curiosity and courage, and hearing her story sparked something in me that I’d been missing.
I know many young people, like me, will resonate with these feelings: the loneliness epidemic, the exhaustion of staying informed in a world that feels relentless, the pain of being expected to function “normally” in abnormal times. How do we keep going? Why should we?
Yet, somehow, I’ve found solace in these connections, things that might seem unrelated at first, but that together remind me there is light. And for that, I am endlessly grateful.
So this year, for the first time, I am setting up my own ofrenda.
- A light for those we’ve lost to violence.
- A light for those who feel alone, know that you are not.
- A light for Mother Nature, so exploited, disrespected, and broken by our hands.
- A light for animals, our most sacred treasures.
- A light for those feeling lost, like me, may we find our way back to ourselves and our paths.
- A light for anyone who needs it.
This Día de Muertos, I invite you to take a moment to bring light into the world. Close your eyes and imagine a beam of light radiating from your body into the world. You are light. You are loved. You are seen.
If this message sparks even a tiny feeling of safety, understanding, or connection for you, thank you for letting me in. That is the greatest gift.
With love,
Regina Zuniga
The Skin Deep Digital Content Specialist
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