abscission
abscission
the act of cutting off; sudden termination
Many see grief as a short-term ailment. Personally, I think of it as a claw tearing gashes into the fabric of our lives. Possible to mend, but even with care certain seams never quite feel the same.
At a meeting I wasn’t invited to, people accepted the idea that an employee handbook can tell you how long to mourn. Relationships and trauma don’t work that way.
This is an era of mass death, mass abandonment, and mass apathy. There’s a reason the managerial class doesn’t want to give us space to process. They know that distance changes perspective, and with enough you may notice how many of these “losses” are actually being stolen.
Several well documented crises are decimating our most vulnerable communities. Quietly accepting this is called normal, and those pushing back are pathologized. Labeled unwell for caring too much, being too outraged, or suffering for too long.
Our world is made up of multiple enmeshed systems that are presently strangling us. If we want to change this, we need to slow everything down. Create room to breathe, grieve, and grow.
Honor that which has been lost, name that which has been taken, and dismantle the systems which blurred that line. All of them.
ContextFall
Talking to Grief by Denise Levertov