August: GRIEF 🖤

loving tips, a nourishing meditation, and reflection questions for moving through global grief

For this month’s new moon offering, I had planned to write about affirmations, but grief & sadness are so present in both my personal life and the collective energy that I’ve decided to switch topics. As an artist (and a creative coach who guides artists), I often advise that the best thing to write and create art around is the thing that is heaviest on your heart, stickiest to write, the thing you are most afraid to expose—that is the story that needs to be told. In its telling, in its seeing of the light, it becomes easier to hold—and eventually, after enough retellings, it’s transmuted into love, empathy, wisdom, connection, and healing.

Last week I put in an application for a raggedy senior cat at the shelter. I fell in love with him—every time I’d visit he’d meow excitedly at my presence, rest his head on my lap or nuzzle it in between the crook of my elbow, and curl up next to me for cuddles. He had congestion and only a few teeth left, and so desperately wanted to be loved and taken out of the shelter. The shelter told me my application was approved, and a week later, I saw a voicemail from them: a different application was approved for this cat—not mine.

I’m heartbroken. I had already bought things for him, and was doing hardcore research on his breed, how to alleviate his congestion and sensitive tummy, and how to reduce cat allergies. My partner and parents were also excited to welcome him into our family, and were even planning a kitty shower for when he came home.

I am no stranger to grief and heartbreak. Seeing a box of cat things that most likely need to be returned, and calling my family to let them know this major thing isn’t happening reminds me of my canceled wedding to an abusive ex. Obviously the scale of the grief is massively different, but the achey heart and feeling of having the rug swept out from underneath me is the same. A big part of grief is learning that the life you thought you were going to have isn’t going to happen the way you had planned—and being gentle with yourself as you digest this new information and begin to see a new path forward.

I am also acutely aware of the global grief we are experiencing as we move through multiple genocides and the ecocide of our home planet. I am changing my lifestyle to bear the heatwaves in Colorado, waking up extra early to walk Roo (this is very hard for me as an autistic person) and spending less time outside. And I feel silly holding my benign cat grief while I am witnessing the continued horrors in Palestine—we have now passed 300 days of genocide executed by Israel and funded by our own dollars, with an estimated death toll in Gaza at 186,000 people.

photo of the destruction in Gaza, via Fariha Róisín’s newsletter

The reality of Palestine is beyond inhumane. I recently saw a video of a Palestinian child’s head being rolled into a body bag—no body, just their head—echoing the video we all witnessed of a Palestinian father holding his beheaded child’s body up in the air—no head, just their body. I cannot comprehend how beheaded children have become a regular occurrence of our daily lives, and how some people are still brainwashed by American & Israeli propaganda that insist this genocide is about Hamas and justified by the events of October 7th.

More and more accounts of Palestinian prisoners being gang-raped and tortured by IDF soldiers are surfacing—IDF soldiers are inserting electric rods up Palestinian prisoners anuses, unleashing assault dogs on Palestinian people, including women (and the heartbreaking account of an assault dog mauling an autistic man to death). There’s this heartbreaking testimony from Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, who described the level of carnage he witnessed while providing aid to people in Gaza. He confirmed that the IDF is targeting almost exclusively children, who were shot dead-center in the heart and on the side of the head.

He says: “No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the world’s best sniper.”

This week, Israel also assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas. They assassinated the very person negotiating the ceasefire, hostage swaps, and peace treaties for Palestine (and btw, Haniyeh had already agreed to multiple ceasefires and the acceptance of two-state solution). This is blatant proof that Israel does not want a ceasefire, and that the Hamas narrative is a red herring to distract us from the truth: Israel wants a genocide of the Palestinian people, and to claim & colonize their land.

Israel killed SIXTY of Haniyeh’s family members since October, including his sons and grandchildren. Haniyeh’s response to those assassinations epitomizes the resilience and strength of the Palestinian people:

“The blood of my children is not more valuable than the blood of the children of the Palestinian people. All martyrs of Palestine are my children.”

Annnnnd don’t even get me started on the spectacle of Kamala Harris and the frustration I feel with people getting swept up, yet again, by the myth that representation & electoral politics will save us all. For a much more eloquent and well-researched analysis on this, please read Fariha Róisín’s latest newsletter.

How does one possibly handle this immense amount of heartbreak?

First, it helps to know that you are not alone in your grief. Many people are waking up to the myth of our institutions, our president, and the “greatness” of America. America was built on the genocide of native people, the colonization of native land, and the enslavement of Black people. American has never, and will never, protect and care for us.

We are not meant to hold systemic grief on our own. The global shit-show that is happening is so much larger than our own individual experiences or responsibilities. It is impossible to carry alone. Please, if you are in need of support, reach out to a friend or family member. If it’s difficult to reach out when you are going through it, you can also create support protocols when you have the capacity in order to plan ahead for these moments. For example: my friends and I text each other the mushroom emoji when we are having su*cidal ideation and need direct validation of our existences, but don’t have the capacity to call or engage in a conversation about how we’re feeling.

Secondly, know that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is nothing you “have” to do or not do when grieving. There is no timeline you have to adhere to for moving through your grief. I would say the one thing that does help with grief is being present with it, but even this is flexible—it’s okay to take breaks from grieving, and to find a healthy distraction if you’ve been in the pits for a while.

This brings me to my last tip: focus on putting one foot in front of the other. That’s all you need to do. Just take it moment by moment. I remember when I was healing from that cataclysmic breakup, grief would hit me at the most random times: I’d be frying up an egg, and feel such an out-of-body surge of grief I had no choice but to sit on the kitchen floor and let the tears flow. And then I’d stop crying, and ask myself what I needed. Usually water or a snack. So I’d go and do that. And then I’d ask myself what I needed next. Perhaps a walk, or a nap. So I’d go and do that. (P.S. If you haven’t already noticed, grief is exhausting, so your body is most likely calling for rest and slowness if you are grieving).

Putting one foot in front of the other is how I moved through that time in my life: asking myself what I needed moment-to-moment, and giving myself what I needed moment-to-moment. Looking back, caring for myself so skillfully naturally led to the healing and the joy and the light.

I’ll leave you with a meditation for being present with your emotions, as well as reflection questions for processing & learning from them. These resources are typically for my paid subscribers, but if you’d like to use them and are unable to afford a paid subscription, send me a note and I’d be happy to share them with you this month.

Take really, really good care my friends. Revolution is here—get involved, and be on the right side of it ❤️‍🔥