The Role Grief Holds in Our Movements

(This is a post I started to write months ago as we were going into December, hence the discussion of weather and timelines that may not reflect our current reality.)

There is so much that is hard to hold on a day-to-day basis. Most of us are constantly trying to make ends meet and survive.

As we come to the end of another hard year, I want to emphasize the importance of the tangible care that we provide for one another. We are still in the throws of a global pandemic and as we enter the coldest parts of winter, especially for those of us in the Midwest, we are facing additional challenges to make sure that we stay safe and warm during the season.

It's easy to get caught up in the holidays, the beautiful winter, and the fun outings with friends and not reflect on the things that are hard to think about.

It's easy, and sometimes necessary for our own well-being, not to dwell on the enormity of housing insecurity, homelessness, substance abuse, and the lack of care from our systems relating to all of these things.

Then when we do look at our systems of "care", especially for those of us who work within these systems, we can see so often how they fall short. The medical system doesn't work for so many of us who are disabled, fat, queer, or poor. The carceral 'justice' system, law enforcement, and military-industrial complexes don't serve people but rather ideals based on oppression, fear, xenophobia, racism, and violence.Our public health systems have come to the realization that 'racism is a public health crisis', but often don't take the steps to elaborate on how that recognition, the recognition of systemic and structural factors having more of an impact on our health than our individual choices, should change the composition of our societal structures. Even when it does, those voices are silenced in the name of policy, the notion of 'impossibility' and affordability, and, even more horrendously, popularity.

How disheartening is it that the notion that everyone deserves a baseline of care, regardless of their socioeconomic status, is an unpopular option?

Now, I don't just say all of this to be a mega downer. I am simply acknowledging that it's okay to say that all of this fucking sucks.

I experienced forms of racial trauma this past week as a result of trying to recruit Black folks for a study that I am doing for my ethnographic research methods class. While I won't go into details, the white folks in this Southern Minnesota town were not too happy about me talking about Blackness. As I talked to my therapist about this, and went through some somatic exercises to release all the tension I was feeling, she asked me how that process went for me, and I broke down.

I had been feeling sad and overwhelmed the whole week, but I was finally able to cry about it. I told her that I felt if I cried, I was admitting that it was too hard and I couldn't do anything about how things are here. She looked at me with the sadness and recognition of someone who knew exactly what I was feeling and told me something that I think will stick with me forever. She said, "There needs to be room for grief in this work".

I blinked through my tears and took a minute to process this. In the back of my mind, I thought, How could I waste time being sad when there is work to be done? She proceeded to talk about the ways that taking care of ourselves and honoring our emotions and bodies needs to be central to our work for liberation, or we will be perpetuating harm on ourselves and acting from a place of survival.

It wasn't the first time I heard this, but I realized it was the first time that my optimism had been met with such direct violence. I had always operated in a place of being jaded, expecting the worse, and after moving from Florida, I guess I naively thought that things were going to be different.

But at that moment, that moment of realizing that things probably wouldn't be different, I decided that I was going to be different. I am more myself at this moment in time than I ever have been. I have stopped pretending that I needed to be perfect to be happy, and with that comes a new love and respect for myself. One that doesn't come from approval or permission from others but rather doing what I need to feel okay. And right now, that doesn't include being jaded.

I know there is a lot going on. I know there is a lot to do and even more that I am not able to do right now. I also know that if I plan to spend the rest of my life working toward liberation for my people and for all people, I cannot neglect myself.

We perpetuate individualism and grind culture in our movements when we pretend that we don't need to rest, breathe, yell, cry. Grieve.

Only by grieving the world as it is now, can I move on to imagining and accepting something different.

Cover image illustration by Emily Roberts for Verywell