"Grief is subversive"
I can't keep moving from one crisis to the next numbly
What can I do? How can I be helpful?
These are the questions I ask myself each time. When neighbors are threatened with eviction, when the police murder an unarmed Black person, when a gunman shoots up a grocery store or a school, when the Supreme Court ends a basic human right.
I want to be useful. If I can, then maybe I feel a little less powerless in the face of overwhelming injustice. And if I’m being honest, maybe it will make me feel a little less guilty about the rights and privileges I have that are being denied to others.
“I’m sure you feel fucked up about it too.”
My friend had just shared her feelings of fear and rage when she followed it up with this text. But the truth is I hadn’t been feeling that much at all. There was anger inside me, to be sure, but it felt muted. Numb. Once again, I had been focusing on action. What can I do? How can I be helpful? There were rallies and marches and abortion funds…
My friend’s text was a generous invitation to pause. I stopped to think about how I was feeling. I felt a mix of rage, fear, and sadness welling up before I stopped it. This has become routine for me. The truth is I’m afraid to let myself feel all these feelings because I honestly don’t know if I can function. But ignoring these feelings, suppressing them through a fixation on action, is not going to work.
The truth is, I need to feel these feelings because they give the actions I take context and meaning. More importantly, I need to feel them because they are a part of being human. When so much feels at risk and out of control, I owe this to myself; I deserve to feel human.
So I’m not giving up on my commitment to action. I still want to know what I can do and how I can be helpful. But I’m also going to carve out some space for grief. And I don’t want to do it alone.
During the summer of 2020, a dear friend shared a book with me called The Wild Edge of Sorrow. The book encourages us to create rituals for grief. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one or a relationship, grief needs a container. Rituals, new or existing, can create a space to feel and process grief when it otherwise feels too much. The author argues this is true for bigger losses like the loss of sustainable life on the planet due to climate change.
The author also argues that grief is not distinct from taking action:
“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”
In the coming weeks, I hope to design a grief ritual with people I care about. I want to invite us to grieve for everything that’s been taken and everything that is threatened. I want to yell and cry and feel my broken heart fully.
I don’t expect this grief ritual to be an act of closure. There are too many ongoing fights to experience that. But I hope it will be an act of acknowledgment. I don’t want to keep moving from one crisis to the next numbly. Even though I feel intimidated by it, I want to believe that grief won’t break me. In fact, it might make me stronger. It can serve as a reminder the next time I ask, “What can I do?” and “How can I be helpful?” that when others are hurting, I’m hurting too.
Other Recent Writing
Recommendations for Listening/Reading/Watching
[Movie] RRR
[Article] The Real Villain in the Gentrification Story by Jerusalem Demsas
[Article] Patients sat in abortion clinic waiting rooms as Roe fell. They all had to be turned away.
[Reflection questions via Twitter]
