grief necessitates us

i dont think we'll survive without feeling

i’ve been thinking a lot about how loss shapes us. when you’re in it, it can be hard to grasp at your future self; especially in that sense that everything you’ve known has been stripped away from you.

i do think there’s something special to be found in grief. we can especially see this when we look back at ourselves in time and see how much growth and aliveness emerged from deep periods of transition. though, the hardest part of grief isn’t the grief itself, it’s the Being with it—letting ourselves slow down enough to feel through everything that’s there, even though we’d rather just ‘get through it’.

last summer i fell in Love with my grieving when i realized how radically it opened my heart. because nothing else mattered but the pain i was feeling in my heart, it made me really courageous. i started exploring life in these vastly different ways trying to make sense of the world without the thing i had lost. making new friends, sharing my art, entering into totally unknown territories was the least scary thing i could be doing compared to my grief.

i’d also been craving some kind of revolutionary shift in my life just before i went through this massive loss. i longed for the days when i was growing intensely and in rhythm with life. and when it struck me i had this full body knowing that it was a true kind of death, and all i could do was let go and ride it through.

grief is a spell for radical acceptance.

i hold the thought that griefwork is a necessary part of the revolution. if we want these systems to burn and we want to sustain ourselves amidst the transition we have to learn how to grieve. most importantly, we have to learn how to hold each other. hold each other accountable. hold each other in love. hold each other in the visions of our highest possible worlds. i don’t think we’ll make it far into the future if we don’t start feeling.

grief will come for every single one of us. we have a duty to the future of this earth to let go of our normative programming around grief and what it means to grieve. specifically, that we’ve been socially coerced into believing that strength means swallowing what we feel. true strength comes in our ability to feel deeply and share it with the world.

feeling is part of the revolution as much as organizing is. we need organizers and revolutionaries who can regulate themselves and process the intensities of what’s to come. we are undoubtably going to experience immense loss. the people we love. the lifestyles we hold tightly. we know the risks in the fight for liberation, just as much as we know the risks in passively letting fascism continue on it’s path of total destruction.

we need to remember how to feel and WHY we are feeling. because deep down we know that what doesn’t feel liberating doesn’t work for our Bodies. that holding in our sadness/grief/fears will infect your body and mutate into the same bitterness, spite, and hatred that consumes dominant culture.

these motherfuckers want you to get sick. they want to isolate you from community and funnel you into whatever cookie cutter shape can captivate you under the illusion that there are still american dreams to be had.

consider that everything that’s ever been told to you was a lie:

what if there are no soul mates—would you have more energy to divest from nuclear family structures and back into your community? would you finally stop abandoning your friends and loved ones every time you fall in love because there’s no mirage of happily ever after to fall into? would you create new models of love that don’t allow you to accept shit behavior on account of someone being meant for you?

what if there was no such thing as insanity—would you willfully lose your mind? what if losing your mind meant that you are maddened by the state of society? that the most normal thing you could feel is insane in a capitalistic society? would you start to notice that the most crazy people are the most oppressed? could you see the institutional benefit of calling someone mad instead of offering them care/resources and space to explore their body/consciousness?

what’s so crazy about the need to feel? what if feeling undermines patriarchy? what if it challenges masculine programming embedded even in the sacred spaces of our community? i think a lot of time we forget this, or toss it aside because of the hyper individualistic ties to phrases like “i have to protect my peace” in advocation for self care (& often, some conflict avoidant behaviors).

patriarchy has trained us to believe that feeling is illogical, unproductive, and foolish. but really, there’s nothing foolish about recognizing how important our emotional world is. open hearted feeling is a very conscious and deliberate decision that is informed by reality. it takes a very honest, logical person to hold an awareness of all the cruelty and injustice in the world and choose to feel deeply despite it. our bodies survive through care, not brutality. we have so much more to offer the earth when we come from a centered and emotionally resourced place. this is a fact of our very survival as humans.

WORLDBUILDING

i imagine worlds where we can cry openly. where we don’t think twice about holding strangers in public. we actually give a fuck when we ask someone how they are doing. worlds where our open heartedness and deep feeling is honored, and held in high social regard. in this imaginal world, community is no longer founded upon nuclear structures and bloodline factions. we recognize we are all connected in the bio-sphere and webs of life. we hold all formed things in open hearted mutual reception. we offer care to our friends in the dirt, mycelial networks, trees, the bugs that scare us, the mice looking for shelter in the deep winter months, even our laptops/phones/technology find liberation and are cultivated with care and curiosity. here, we feel because it feels good to let go. we feel because we know we will be held no matter what. here, our most courageous humans aren’t imperial war heroes or institution upholding people, they are deeply vulnerable, honest beings.

*if you’re interested in working further with me via somatic work/griefwork/ or spiritual/emotional guidance, message me or find some of my links on my page <3

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