Grief clears the way

Lesson #22 of 40

As I approach 40, I’m embarking on a year-long project to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned in four decades of life. This is lesson #22. You can read the full series here.

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I didn’t look at the election results Tuesday night. I watched an episode of Shrinking with Billy, kept my phone in another room, and went to bed early. Still, I tossed and turned. I slept in small bursts, punctuated by bad dreams. Early the next morning, Billy rolled over and said, “It’s not good.”

I told him I wanted to see the news for myself. I padded to the kitchen, grabbed my phone, and, through bleary eyes, saw the giant text The New York Times reserves for only the biggest stories: “TRUMP STORMS BACK.” I scrolled further down to see the results. It wasn’t even close.

I felt sick. I imagine a lot of you reading this did, too. But I don’t want to presume. If those results taught me anything, it’s that I’ve presumed too much, too long. I’ve been comfortable in my assumption that the people around me share the same beliefs I do, that we’re all on the same side of things.

Seeing those numbers — seeing how many people voted for Trump — told me otherwise. It was difficult to process. It still is. It brings up all sorts of feelings for me: anger, despair, confusion, hopelessness. More than anything, though, it makes me feel sad.

I’ve barely begun to grieve the election results. I spent the past week disassociating by working on my book — I’ve written more than 20,000 words so far. My characters became angrier, their beliefs more radical. They shared their feelings more easily. Meanwhile, I didn’t talk much at all about what I was feeling. I stayed glued to my laptop, safe in a world I’d created instead of facing reality.

I told Becca I wasn’t sure what to write in today’s newsletter. “It’s easier to make up things my fictional characters say,” I texted her.

“Maybe that’s something to include in the essay,” she replied.

Grief takes time. I know this, and I imagine a lot of you reading this do, too. If you ascribe to the stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — I’m squarely in the denial stage: working on my book, going through my regularly scheduled days, walking past the Harris/Walz signs in my neighborhood as if nothing’s really changed. 

But I can’t ignore the shift that’s happened. It’s a seismic one. A loud one. A frightening one. If I let my feelings catch up with me, I can feel the anger start to bubble up inside. But it’s coming out sideways, with me getting frustrated with loved ones instead of the voters and people in power who make me want to scream.

I know what it feels like to bargain, to beg a god you may or may not believe in to make things better. I know what it feels like to be so depressed that you can barely get out of bed, barely think ahead to the next day, barely find a reason to live. And I know what it feels like to accept a major loss. This is perhaps the heaviest, bleakest part of the process. It feels like defeat.

I also know that these steps don’t happen in neat order, that you can be angry and depressed, bargaining and catatonic, accepting things one day and in total denial the next. Grief is anything but linear. It can be hard to describe. Hard to rationalize. Hard to open up about.

I spent less time online than usual last week, but when I did, I saw a refreshing number of newsletters and social media posts giving people permission to grieve. This felt like a significant change from 2016, when folks were quick to take their rage and despair and turn it into action. This time around, things feel different. The grief we’re experiencing is real — and the desire to sit with that grief, to let the depression and anger fully soak in, is palpable.

“Sure, I was sad after 2016, too. But the story I told myself about that election was specific to Hillary, to the popular vote, to his narrow electoral-college victory,” Ann Friedman wrote. “It was a story of unholy aberration. My sadness was quickly melted by white-hot rage, which congealed into ‘Vote. Protest. Donate.’”

She continued: “Trying on that old mantra this week has felt like lacing up a thrift-store sneaker that's been molded to someone else's foot. I can't walk in it. I am familiar with anger, and I know how to move with it into action. I'm not sure what to do with sadness.”

At first glance, all this sadness might look like giving up: all of us liberals licking our wounds instead of fighting back. But I see hope. I know what a powerful force grief can be.

True change — real, lasting, transformative change — happens when you hit rock bottom. When you’ve run out of options. When you finally let yourself face all the heavy truths you’ve been ignoring. When the only way forward is to dispose of your old beliefs and comforts and carve a new path forward. When you allow yourself to trust in the unknown, as scary, uncomfortable, and risky as it may seem, because it’s better than the dark place you are today.

Right now, the path forward may seem insurmountable. Living alongside, much less connecting with, Americans who voted for a different future than you might feel incomprehensible — unsafe, even. Imagining the next four years, and the years ahead of that, might feel terrifying.

But there’s a way forward. And it starts with giving ourselves space and time to grieve.

Grief clears the way. I’ve discovered the clarifying power of grief in my own life, and I believe it can help us through this dark moment in America. But it will require us to sit with this deeply uncomfortable sadness. To not distract ourselves through it or get back to work before we’ve even begun to mourn. 

I am writing this to myself as much as you. The temptation to turn away from sadness is strong. As much as I want to stay in my fictional world, bury myself in work, watch distracting shows, and convince myself that things won’t be that bad, I know that won’t accomplish anything. That desire to disengage comes from a place of privilege and apathy. Instead, I need to grieve: to cry and scream about what those election results mean — for my daughter, for my friends, for people less privileged than I am, and for me. I need to feel the depths of despair, as scary as they may be. 

As Catherine Andews wrote last week, “Grief, amazingly, will not kill us. In fact, it’s a deep and healing catharsis that can clear our energy and our fields once we let it up and out.”

Here’s the other secret about grief: it creates space for joy. When I meet someone joyful, I know they’ve experienced pain and come out the other side. It’s the hardened people — the ones who are quick to anger or spitefulness — who haven’t yet faced their grief.

Ann Friedman wrote that she was “choosing to see grief as a compass,” which I loved. The sadness that Ann and Catherine and countless other people expressed last week will give us the clarity and strength we’re seeking. It will make room for joy. It might even bring us some hope.

If we are able to sit with our sadness collectively, I have faith we’ll be able to come up with radical new solutions, from community support and mutual aid to rethinking the many broken systems that got us to the place we are now. It will take time and some serious reckoning, but it can happen.

There’s a sixth stage of the grieving process, one that David Kessler added in 2020: finding meaning. Even after acceptance, our hearts stay broken. But this feeling will not last forever; in the darkness, light shines through.

Just as it takes bravery to love, it takes bravery to grieve. Sitting with these feelings — allowing ourselves to feel the full weight of things — is hard to do. But it will clear the way. It will help us determine where to go next.

xoxo
KHG