ON GRIEF

The below is from a piece I wrote for my newsletter. It felt like something I wanted to have up here on my blog for folks to read in their own time. So here it is. From my October 2023 Newsletter - On Grief.

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As I am writing those words I actually can’t believe my own eyes. 

How is it October 2023 already?
I realise I’m starting every single one of my newsletters with a reflection on how time flies - I have indeed become my grandparents!

When I sat down to write this newsletter I hadn’t planned on writing about grief. In fact, I had a cute plan to talk about Black History Month, which has just kicked off in the UK, tell you why you should sign yourself or your friends up to the next cohort of the ‘Introduction to Anti-racism’ course and get you involved in my Patreon.

But alas flow went another way, so grief it is. I have promised myself that this is a season of of trusting my intuition, of sharing what it is on my heart, whether it’s ‘on brand’ (whatever that means) or not and I am keeping that promise. 

So much has happened since we last spoke - in my personal life, in the world around us. So much has happened and yet the world keeps spinning (for now at least, ours and our leaders action on the climate crisis permitting). Isn’t that odd? 

I find it an odd feeling at times, especially when I move through feelings of loss and grief, as I have been over these past few months. I find it utterly surreal to notice how everything and everyone around me is carrying on whilst I am somewhat frozen in time. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has experienced this. When I say frozen, I’m not talking about an actual frozen in time, where I’ve not done anything. Most of us don’t have that luxury. Most of us, under capitalism, have to somewhat function, come what may. Have to show up to work, have to perform, even as we’re grieving. Maybe that’s the part that makes it so particularly surreal. If we had the freedom to retreat as fully as we needed to, to be with our grief, go with the flow and the emotions of it, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard, so surreal to see everyone else carrying on. Maybe we’d pass through it quicker.

As odd as it is, I also strangely find solace in the fact that the world keeps moving. It comforts me to know that even though it feels like my world is ending, the world itself keeps going. And that means that whenever I am ready, whenever I have grieved enough or have reached a level of processing that feels good, I can jump back in. That endings are a part of life and that with every ending comes a new beginning. That every time something or someone dies, something new emerges. When I still read the bible on a regular basis (I have a very complicated relationship with christianity these days, but that’s for another day) there was this one verse of scripture that gave me much comfort. I had forgotten about it, but then my friend Father Jarel Robinson-Brown brought it back to my memory when he shared it on his instagram stories the other day:

‘I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.’

(John 12:24 NLT)

I believe there is deep truth in this thought. Grief, death, endings are a part of this life. The more we refuse to accept that, the more we avoid our pain and our grief, the harder it becomes. Not only does it become harder, but if we avoid letting things die and all the hard feelings that come with it, if we avoid feeling the pain, we miss out on the process, the growth. We carry the old that we’re suppressing into the new we want to create. If we can embrace it however, feel it, move through it, be held in it, every ending, every death is always the beginning of new life. In a multiplied way.

I have experienced this in my own life before and that inner knowing has been one of the things carrying me through this most recent period of grief. 

There is one other thing we must address when talking about grief. Everything I’m saying is all well and good, but, circling back to what I said about capitalism, it’s often easier said than done. Our communities, our societies aren’t set up to hold grief. In fact, we have done our best to physically remove any traces of death, ageing or endings from our lives. We don’t talk about death, we don’t talk about loss, we don’t talk about endings. And when we do, it is often in such a sensationalised, numb way that doesn’t really allow for the full spectrum of grief to unfold. The headlines are always moving us on. 

So what do we do? I believe part of embracing grief, part of allowing the full spectrum of human emotions back in, requires us to create space for them in whichever small ways we can. Sharing with our communities when we grieve so it might give someone else permission to do the same. Supporting one another when we are going through it, by holding space, by offering practical support, whatever it is. Not forgetting about someone’s grief. Folks are often really good at supporting someone in the first couple of weeks of their grief; when the death, the break up, the life altering experience has just happened. It’s the four, six, twelve week mark where we drop off because we get sucked back into our own sense of urgency (understandably so, we all function in capitalism). Holding ourselves accountable to stay present with our own grief and the grief of those around us, for however long it lasts, is another thing we can do. 

I realise that those are mostly interpersonal, community building things There is of course then the imagining of a world beyond capitalism, beyond a system that keeps telling us that our only function is to be productive. And organising to that end, but I’ll leave that for another time.

I believe it is vital for us to find new (or ancient, our ancestors knew a thing or two about grieving) ways of holding grief. Not just because we all experience it in our own lives but because the world as we know it is ending. 

I’m not saying this to scare anyone or to be a doomsdayer - I still believe that we can change things, that we can rally together to mitigate the climate crisis, that we can break down systems to build new and better worlds. But I also believe that the only way to do this is to let the old ways die. We will have to grieve collectively, because if we don’t, if we suppress it, we’ll just carry the old wounds, the old ways of doing things into the new worlds we’re hoping to build. 

I’m sharing all of this in the hope that wherever you find yourself. Whether life is great right now, or whether you too are experiencing loss or endings of any kind, you might be encouraged that it won’t always be like this. That you’re allowed to feel it while it lasts, and that this too shall pass.

If you want to share more and chat more about all of this in the context of community, I invite you to join my Patreon - I hold space for an Open Forum once a month for patrons of all tiers and our next one will be all about grief (I literally just decided that because I realise it’s the topic on my heart haha!). Hope to see some of you there.

Thank you for reading, thank you for being a part of my little corner on the internet.

Sending you much love and many blessings and warm hugs for the moments of grief.

Jess x