Today is my dad’s birthday. He died suddenly when I was 25 and my world completely upended. I didn’t know how I was supposed to act, and I did what I did best at the time: suppress everything and pretend like I was fine. Because I acted so cool, many of my friends didn’t come to his funeral. They didn’t think I needed the support, and so I was able to keep my mask intact. That is, until my coworkers walked in. They didn’t ask permission. They just showed up. And in that moment, my mask came off and I became undone by grief. 

The memory still brings up strong emotions for me. I didn’t know how much I needed the support. I didn’t understand death or grief, and until that day I thought I could run and hide from them. Since that moment, I have become an apprentice of death and its impact on the living. I am now here to encourage others to stop running. 

Grief is often described as a few tears and five conveniently packaged stages that we can move through at our own pace. If we are lucky, we will be awarded three bereavement days from our employers in case a loved one dies. Grief in our western society is a pest and a nuisance that we have little tolerance for. Grief, of course, does not care what we think of it, and will always find us no matter how we try to hide. 

My relationship with grief can only be described like any mortal trying to serve an ancient God. At first, I used to feel an immediate sense of dread. I would try to avoid the stranger lingering by the door, but I soon learned that it is impossible to ignore such a colossal presence. Now, I try my best to drop everything to clear a space at the table for my guest. While sitting at the table, I’ve learned that grief is something much more primal than we are taught. It is wild and untamable. It cries sometimes, but mostly it howls and shrieks. It shakes with rage, or worse, it is silent and unseen. 

The behaviors of a beast so feral it is jarring to most of our climate controlled inner worlds. We believe our emotions are something to be domesticated, something to be tamed. We think we can prune and clip and mow our unsavory emotions and instead tend to a garden of handpicked pleasant feelings. But grief cannot be contained, and if it is not expressed intentionally, it will reveal itself subconsciously in the behaviors we are most ashamed of and in the diseases we cannot cure. 

Grief work is soul activism. As we stretch our ability to sit with the discomfort of grief, so too do we stretch our ability to love deeply. We are in a moment of profound grief, with families being torn apart by ICE agents acting with impunity, and American-made bombs massacring families on their native lands abroad. Ignoring our primal instinct to grieve these atrocities deadens our souls. If you have been stirred by these egregious disturbances, I encourage you to invite Grief to your table. I encourage you to howl. And while you do, listen closely. You may hear the howls of others who, like you, cannot make sense of senseless violence and cruelty. In your howling, you realize you are not alone.