Grief connects us all
Grief is a tough topic to discuss but is something we universally feel. Everyone has or will experience multiple forms of grief throughout their lives. These different forms of grief are not always viewed with the same heaviness, but each carry tremendous weight. Grief is meant to be witnessed. However, many are uncomfortable with the experience of holding space for someone who is going through it. There are always less people checking in once the funeral is over, as if placing a body to rest somehow also removes the pain of absence. And what about the times death isn’t the cause of grief? Why are Americans so awkward about grieving?
The truth is, grief is a part of everything. When listening to poet and comedian, ALOK, speak on the topic, some of their points stuck with me. Americans don’t know how to properly grieve. Capitalism has no time to allow for tears and feelings. We still have to make enough to survive long enough to finally have the time to be able to feel. Even writing it out, it sounds absurd, and yet this is the logic we are all forcing upon ourselves. That grief is only to be felt when alone, like in the shower or when trying to go to bed.
No wonder we are so bad at knowing how to respond to someone actually feeling their emotions and allowing them to pour out onto whomever will bare witness. ALOK states that we as a society have been denied access to feeling grief to it’s fullest extent as a means of keeping us divided. They believe that grief is political because if we could grieve without the fears of further loss, we would be able to understand how interconnected we truly are with one another. Every experience through that perspective forces us to see each other as humans. For example, that bad experience with a cashier now reads as someone going through a tough time instead of just bad customer service.
We are also harder to manipulate when we bear witness to each other’s grief. Going to war, laws limiting the rights of others, and overall mistreatment of power quickly becomes questioned when our empath has been activated. We are able to see the truth, that we are all the same, and we all grieve. How have we become some numb to the need to feel?
Capitalism has programmed us to look the other way whenever we feel uncomfortable. Scroll past what we don’t want to see; it is easier to just watch funny videos of cats. Chasing dopamine instead of leaning into the discomfort of pain. This avoidance of our emotional states of being has desensitized our society, and as a result, violence grows.
Unrecognized grief is the reason why we have become so divided as a nation. Our inability to honor the process for ourselves and others has compounded into frustration, jealousy, and rage. Without somewhere to place this discomfort, it gets projected onto any person who doesn’t conform to the same standards of living in avoidance.
These projections are often felt by LGBTQIA+ community members. For many of us, we have experienced being disowned by family and community, losing careers, and friends passing away too young. Society saw our ability to bare witness to our struggles, our pain, and how we transmuted it into joy. Our community dances and celebrates in spite of oppression and despair. We honor one another with support and uplift those who need it. This is unnatural to our capitalist society, it threatens the very mechanisms it needs to survive.
Billionaires don’t care about your feelings or needs, so they built a system based solely on getting themselves paid. Capitalism isn’t a system built to help a society, only to pay the few at the top. But just like everything in life, this too shall pass. For grief is a necessary part of life, and everything comes to an end with time.
Allowing yourself to feel your sorrows brings you closer to your humanity. Instead of forcing ourselves to keep moving forward, it is okay to simply sit in grief’s company until you feel ready to move again. Grief can set us free from the chains capitalism has put us in, to feel is to rebel.
