Grief as a Personal and Collective Experience

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
9/11.
 
Charleston.
 
Orlando.
 
We, as a nation have just witnessed another moment in our history that will be forever burned onto our collective experience. Alongside numerous other events, we may ask ourselves, decades down the road, “Where were you when the Orlando Massacre took place?”
 
Some will have been getting married, celebrating the birth of a child, fighting cancer, attending a funeral. We all have personal and distinct events in our lives that inevitably take place alongside the unspeakable violence that happens in our public spheres.
 
Grief, in this way, can feel infinitely complex.
 
It stirs up in us the most vulnerable parts of our humanity – feelings of helplessness and powerlessness, a sense of “too much” and “this cannot be.” What do we do with joy and celebration that happens in the midst of this kind of grief? What do we do with our own experiences of pain and violence in the face of such acts of hatred towards our LGBTQ community? How do we reconcile all of this within our bodies at once? These questions speak to the intersection of our personal and collective grief, the distinction and connection of our experiences.
 
In this way, our response to grief is always both personal and collective. The first experience we encounter may be a feeling of overwhelmedness at the complexity of our predicament. Our recovery starts when we allow the fullness of who we are to intersect with the realities of our larger world, when we give ourselves permission for our feelings of helplessness to just be. Over time, we come to find that that experience in our bodies--that feeling that tells us we can’t do this on our own with our one mind and our one body--is actually a true thing. It’s at this point we are able to realize that healing in isolation is never complete and that we need each other. Here, we come to see that your grief is really my grief, is our grief.

Muslims In NYC Remember The Lives Lost In Orlando

On Islamaphobia by Jacob Tobia

What happened when an Orthodox Jewish congregation went to a gay bar to mourn Orlando

Making Our Way through Grief and Loss

Recently, we’ve been thinking about grief and loss. These are fundamentally human experiences and a couple of the main reasons people seek out counseling. Live long enough and we all become familiar with the grief that comes on unexpectedly—with the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the experience of a natural disaster or other calamitous event. The loss impacts us on every level and makes us feel out of control. And then there’s that other grief, the sustained grief of living every day under the weight of oppressive realities like racism, sexism, homophobia (to name a few).

To grieve is both a conscious and unconscious process; it is our way of getting back the control we feel was lost during the traumatic event. Our methods of grieving are as varied and diverse as we are. Perhaps we meet our loss with sadness, with self-doubt or in the case of sustained trauma, with internalized oppression. We compromise who we are to protect ourselves from further pain and loss.

So how do we create a new normal or at least  find moments of reprieve? How do we care for ourselves in the midst of sustained grief? Check out the video below. In creating this powerful piece, the artist does something different; he refuses to allow his grief to define him.

Dumbfoundead "Safe" OUT NOW! Spotify: https://goo.gl/C053DK | iTunes: https://goo.gl/lxJoW2 | Amazon: https://goo.gl/lxh5LW After the last Academy Awards and the regular whitewashing of hollywood roles, i wrote this song and made this video to add my piece to the conversation.

How do you respond in the midst of your reality? In what creative ways are you combatting areas of sustained grief in your life?

On Black History

all that was

taken

from me

is still here

-- root | immortal

_________________________________________________________________________________

where are my legs. where are my legs.  i had to give them to my babies so they could swim back home to me. back home to me. back home to me. i rubbed the sun all in their hair. Every single birth. i rubbed sun in their hair. so they remember who they look like. who they look like who they look like. me. to lose love that way. to have to watch them be opened like that. all the way down to their mouths. time will never know my skin. wild with everything and nothing but them. i sang into their blood. each and every one of them have my voices in their bones. they will come home. i know they will come home. the whole sky had to hold me when the world came to eat my children. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. that fear. that pain. wake up my loves. into me. i will come to you every night. every single night. because you do not understand your nose. or your feet. or the boats in your eyes. you do not remember me. and you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. you suffer. swept with banzo. swept with banzo. swept with banzo. you suffer. you hate yourself. you hate me. this is death for a mother. how many deaths. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. i am your mother. remember me. remember me. remember me. my hands in your heart. i won’t let you go. I will find you. worlds away from me. i am your beauty. i am you. no matter how much bleach you must drink. every night i will come into you and repair. relove. undo everything that is not me. i memorized you. i will walk over all waters to come and get you. bring you back to me. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know. they do not know.  they do not know i put salt in each one of your skin. each and every one of your skins. they do not know that salt preserves not only fruit. but children. you will remember. you will remember. you will remember. you will remember. you will remember. you will remember. you will remember. you will remember. you see. my love. you see how your body is beginning to slow glow with stars. you are remembering. you are mine. you have never been anything else.

--africa’s lament

Both works from the exquisite poet Nayyirah Waheed. Follow her at nayyirah.waheed on instagram and find her collections salt and nejma at nayyirahwaheed.com