A love letter for the grieving
October 7, 2023 is the day the Hamas organization in Palestine violently retaliated against 75 years of Israeli occupation, and the Israeli government declared open war on Palestinian citizens. It was also the day of my grandmother’s funeral.
The world feels like an open wound. My heart feels like an open wound. I, who told my therapist a month ago that I am “not much of a crier,” have cried every day for the last six weeks. The line between where my grief ends and where the world’s grief begins is impossible to find. I am drowning. We are all drowning.
And yet, our drowning is bringing me hope. We are grieving together. Grief has to be shared in order to be healed. Grieving alone turns our grief into despair, which is poisonous and leeches away at our souls. But grieving together softens us, opens us, makes us kinder and braver.
When I watched the footage of people being tear gassed by the police in Ferguson in 2014, I was 19 years old. It felt like too much for me to bear. But instead of checking out in the sadness and helplessness and anger and shame, I stayed in it, stepped through it, and my capacity to grieve and love expanded. Now, instead of feeling less with each act of violence across the world, I feel more. Holding the grief instead of running from it makes us stronger.
At the same time, I struggle to make room for my personal grief, the loss of my grandmother, in the midst of so much pain and suffering. I am very good at self-negation; carving out my feelings in order to make room for the feelings and needs of others. Right before my grandmother’s funeral, I told my therapist, “I can’t focus on my own feelings right now, because there are so many things other people need from me in this moment.” My therapist understood, but he also said, “Make sure your later doesn’t become never.” This has really stuck with me. Because I can see how easy it would be to turn my later into never. But the zero-sum logic of pain that we keep using - where the person with the most pain is the only one who is valid - only creates more pain. My self-negation is not justice and does not invite healing. At the same time, my grief does not require calls for justice. I can hold space for my own pain while also naming that my pain is not the result of violence done to me by others. By showing up with my whole self as I truly am, I can be present to the intimacy of being changed by Palestinians around the world.
Those who are afraid to step into the grief are risking a fundamental part of their humanity that I am not willing to lose. I am disappointed but not shocked by many of my fellow Americans and our inability to hold the pain of the world. Emotional avoidance is the bedrock of American culture. Grieving is a revolutionary act. To grieve deeply is to threaten the status quo of our communities, our workplaces, our churches. Grief demands action - talking about it, organizing around it. Being “sad” is not grieving, because grief is not only sadness. It is joy, heartache, anger, laughter, tears, remembering and honoring those who we carry in our hearts.
We are human enough to share in the grief of the world. We are strong enough to hurt together. We are brave enough to honor those we carry in our hearts. I carry my grandmother in my heart, but I also carry Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, the people of Ferguson, the people of Palestine, who are changing me with their grief. And I am more human because of it.
I feel overwhelmed by the pain and the suffering in Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, Tigray, America - all of it a result of colonial violence and greed. But I also feel hope, that our grief is birthing a beautiful resistance that might build something that makes this world worth living in.
I told my daughter, “You don’t get a strong heart by protecting your heart. You get a strong heart by ‘lifting’ these painful and difficult feelings. And just like at the gym, you can’t go in lifting 100 pounds of grief and sorrow, it will injure you and leave you no good for anyone…at first you will only be able to handle 10 pounds of grief and sorrow…but keep showing up, keep feeling…keep breaking…every time your heart breaks, it strengthens.” I told her, “The work of grief is the work of activism and of soul-making. It is deep and profound. It’s not about fleeting moments of empathy, but a deep and lifelong commitment to compassion and advocacy. It’s a promise to feel the pain and the sorrow of the world and know that you have been chosen as one of the people on this earth through which past, present, personal and collective grief will be addressed, metabolized, and healed. It is a noble act that requires a strong will and a brave heart.”
-Dr. Saliha Fridi, clinical psychologist