Make Way for Grief – Because More is on the Way
We have our first guest post, written by Godspeed reader Heather Meyer. Heather is certified as a Grief Educator, trained by David Kessler. She also works as marketing manager for B Corp and 1% for the Planet member, HigherRing.
With so many people dealing with troubling times that verge on the overwhelming, I'm happy to share Heather's thoughtful – and helpful – writing with our community.
The topic is so important and the advice so sage I'm dedicating the entire issue to it.
It should be noted that this piece represents Heather's personal voice and not the voice or opinions of her employer.
Godspeed, friends.
Russ
You know the feeling: the weight of another devastating headline, another rollback of rights, another moment when it feels like all the work, all the passion, all the struggle isn’t enough and it’s suffocating you slowly. It’s akin to feeling as though you’re having a panic attack only to open your eyes and realize you’re underwater and actually just plain drowning. In case you didn’t already know - that’s called grief.
We don’t talk about grief in activism, like ever. Come to think of it, we don’t talk about grief in life so I really shouldn’t be surprised. We talk about rage, we talk about resilience, we talk about hope and loss and feeling insufficient. But grief—the dull, persistent, aching sorrow of witnessing suffering and injustice—often gets buried under the pressure, no - the requirement to just keep plugging along. After all, we have jobs to tend to so that we can feed, clothe and house ourselves and we hyper consume along the way to fill the empty pit inside that just will not find itself full. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news folks but that empty pit is grief too.
Society conditions us to see grief as a temporary state, only reserved for the death of a close friend or family member. We are told to believe that it’s something that should be done in solitude where no one has to look at us and it should take no more than roughly two weeks.
But in truth, grief is in every single thing we do. It’s in the feeling of jealousy when someone else gets the job, it’s in the longing for a life you could have lived, if only xyz scenario had worked out. It’s in the death of a pet or the dissolution of a friendship. It’s in every missed opportunity and missed connection. Any form of loss, no matter how important or inconsequential, has an element of grief. So, the question isn’t whether grief will come, because in truth, it’s everywhere - the question is whether we will allow ourselves to acknowledge it, so we can grow from it.
It is so common to resist grief. We push it down, afraid that if we really let ourselves mourn, we’ll drown in it. You’ve surely heard someone in a moment of grief saying, “If I let myself cry, I will never stop.” Well, I’m here to tell you - there is no one who has started crying and actually hasds never stopped. With grief, as with many things in life, the only way out is through. Denying our grief doesn’t make it disappear—it only turns it into exhaustion, numbness, and despair. It makes us brittle, lonely, and disengaged and honestly, it’s exactly how they win.
What if, instead of pushing grief away, we invited it in? What if we made space for communal mourning, for witnessing one another’s losses, for conversations that honor the heartbreak of caring? What if we recognized that grief is not the enemy of action, but a necessary companion to it? I’ve been quoting this phrase for so long and at this point I don’t know where I got it from or if I may have even made it up myself, but it’s become one of my personal taglines. It’s my definition for community, and it goes like this: “When I can I do. When I can’t I rest.” It’s that simple. When I have the fight in me, I show up and I share and I love and I advocate and I care and I try to make the world better while those who cannot, those who need to grieve, they rest. When I need to grieve I take my turn in equal measure, with the assurance that the resistance has not stopped just because I have.
So, I’m here to URGE you to let yourself grieve. Cry for the world. Speak to your loved ones about how it weighs on you. Release yourself of the need to find a solution. For just a moment, allow yourself to mourn fully for what has been lost, even if it didn’t belong to you. Turn your notifications off, delete the apps, ignore the headlines. And then, when you are ready, take your turn and join us on the frontlines.
We have a very long fight ahead of us, and honey we need you at your best.
-- Heather Meyer
Here are some of Heather's favorite resources about grief:
Guides:
Best and Worst Things to Say to Someone in Grief
Podcasts:
How to Live So We Can Die Peacefully - We Can Do Hard Things Pod
Thanatology, The Study of Grief and Mourning - Ologies with Allie Ward
Quasithanatology, The Study of Near Death Experiences - Ologies with Allie Ward
Books:
After: A Skeptical Scientist’s Journey to Understand Life, Death and Beyond
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters Most in The End
How will you allow yourself space to feel your grief? Drop your thoughts in the comments so we can learn from and encourage one another!
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