Unsettling Grief

Exploring the world of grief has provided me with more questions than answers.

In a culture that avoids, limits, and even silences our natural inclination to grieve the many losses associated with living, I’ve found that the deeper dive into grief truly has no end. Beyond the depths that lie below the surface, there is a limitless supply of side trips, underwater tunnels, and caves along the dive down that are entryways into entire worlds of emotions and experiences. Grief is a word too small to hold all that it carries. In my exploration of it, I’ve found myself reaching for otherWays to describe the many different emotions arising from the many different shapes and forms of grief. Here, in goodGrief, we’re carving out the space to do just that, together.

Most recently, I’ve leaned into a certain distinction between two experiences of grief. As the last Father’s Day came and went, I felt the familiar pangs of grief strike as the day passed for the twelfth time in my dad’s absence. Over time, I have found ways to hold this grief that work for me. Knowing when to anticipate it, establishing relationships that can help hold the weight of my grief during these times, and allowing myself the time and space that my grief deserves.

This is a grief that has seemed to settle, in a way. Sure, it gets shaken up from time to time. But overall, when I think of the grief I tend for my father, I see it as an integrated part of me, settled in just where it is most comfortable. In this settled grief, there is a sense of acceptance that we find in the finality of death, the inevitable loss of someone or something that we cannot stop or control.

But then there is a grief that I’ve found impossible to settle inside of me, that I don’t want to settle within me.

It comes when I read headlines of pure horror that give a glimpse of what’s happening in Palestine. It comes when I scroll to a photo of a mother weeping over her lifeless child(ren), a video of a doctor fighting death in inhospitable conditions, images of children emaciated, injured, terrified, and a map of a land made lifeless through modern military power, upholding the evils of colonialism. It comes from unmistakable signs of genocide on my screen.
And it comes, too, when I listen, read, see, and feel the gestures of such pure and enduring love that pour out of the people of Palestine, in poems and song and art and writing, despite the violence, pain, and grief that they are subject to.
This grief is unsettling. It pokes and prods at our hearts, demanding a way in. And we feel it because we are all products of an ongoing colonial project.

The work of decolonization is unsettling because it requires that we come face-to-face with the settler inside of us. The settler who feels the weight of disconnection to the land they have colonized, and who grieves a homeland they or their ancestors actually belonged to. The settler who feels trapped in the ways of modernity, who fears the difficulties of living outside of its perceived comforts. The settler who sees genocide in the palm of their hands – on a device that connects them beyond the closed circle of modernity’s comforts – and keeps scrolling, or closes the app, overwhelmed by the sense of helplessness against the powerful killing machine.

The settler who cannot see a way out of these repetitive cycles of colonialism. 

The thing about the settler is that, despite constantly striving for a sense of personal peace, freedom, and security, they will never actually feel settled. By design, they settle with the crises of the current moment because they have been convinced that the possibility of liberation for all threatens their own short-term comforts and security. They are taught apathy as an element of survival while watching an entire race of people fight to survive.

This grief refuses to settle. It is not here to make peace with; it demands our attention and subsequently, our action. It will keep shaking us until it succeeds in cracking us open – exposing our unrelenting desire and capacity to love each other. To love the people and land of Palestine. To recognize this love as a demand that we eradicate the settler inside of us so that we may see a way out of these cycles of colonialism. So that we may dream into a truer and deeper future of liberation for all.
Our deepest humanity refuses to accept the conditions of genocide. This unsettling grief reminds us that this way of living is not sustainable for life itself. Choosing the actions that lead to more life is the only way through. Leading with love, keeping our hearts open to witness what our grief and love are telling us, through both joy and sorrow, is how we survive the end of this world.

Choosing love is the only way we may feel our hearts finally settle into how we’re meant to exist in this world.