Grieving isn't a Luxury

A place for highly sensitive people to honor their need to grieve

Like so many Gen X’ers, I recall so vividly the day of the Challenger space shuttle launch: My chair with the broken glide in Mrs. K’s class. The vague smell of the oil from the wheels of the rolling television cart. My favorite outfit, purple corduroy pants and flower print waffle shirt, worn in celebration of a day that I’d looked forward to for months.

Three years before, I’d cheered for my hero, Sally Ride. Now Christa McAuliffe was going into space, too. I just knew there was a chance that I could become an astronaut, too.

My chair wobbled as I futilely tried to contain my excitement. I held back my tears of excitement as I we counted down to liftoff. And then, when disaster struck, I couldn’t contain my sobs.

Mrs. K moved in slow motion from the back of the classroom to switch off the television. Over the loudspeaker, the secretary’s voice cracked with the instruction that “all students are to return to normal programming.”

We went to math class. Gym. Bus dismissal. Little else was said, except that we should talk to our parents and watch the news that night.

I don’t recall anyone using the word grief to describe what I was experiencing.

But I knew. I recognized it from when relatives and pets had died. It was the same weight in the pit of my stomach, the same hot tears, the same tension in my shoulders between wanting to push everyone away and wanting desperately to cling to someone.

World War II babies like my mom didn’t grow up with the same notions about kids’ emotional needs as we have today. The baby boomer teachers at my school were equally clueless about how to help kids with this kind of witnessed tragedy.

Our family watched the news, and my mom acknowledged the tragedy of what happened, but there wasn’t much focus on emotion. The teachers the next day covered the story with the same factual tone as a history class.

No one seemed to know quite what to do with a nation full of kids who’d watched live while public figures they’d studied and, in some cases, interacted with died on live television. So many adults fell silent and changed the subject.

It was a painfully imperfect collective grieving process. For many of us, including me, it was also an imperfect personal grief process.

Grief has a way of turning the spotlight onto who we are, individually and collectively.

We bring our personalities, habits, and perspectives to the grieving process. Our limitations come with us, too. We struggle to find words, to sit with painful feelings (our own or others), or to witness someone’s suffering instead of avoiding it or rushing in with a solution.

But it’s never too late to do the arrested work of grieving. We can choose to revisit past losses and give them the language, rituals, and community that we need.

And I think that actively grieving has never been more important than in times of turmoil. So many of us are grieving for broken institutions, vanishing civil protections, a crumbling sense of community safety and civility, and the image of living in a democratic society with “liberty and justice for all.” The losses and threats of loss weave a shroud of grieve over us.

We need to come together in our grief.

It’s unhealthy in the short- and long-term to put off grieving. Quite frankly, we don’t need to add any more challenges to what we’re already living.

As imperfect as our efforts may be, we need to try to find words for our experiences. We need to gather for human connection, emotional and spiritual resonance. We need rituals for naming what has been or is likely to be taken from us. We need to name the perpetrators. We need to join with others and mobilize our grief into action.

As a highly sensitive person, I feel my need to grieve with other HSPs, other idealists, the people who are tuned into this time as a period of collective grief. We need to mourn the fact that this grief is not universal, that some are cheering this destruction.

It’s not enough to be in the same room as other people. I knew that back in 1986, even though I couldn’t have expressed it then.

When I connect with people who are open to grieving this shared experience, it gives me such a feeling of relief. Whether we are commiserating and supporting each other, or my stories and emotions are being tenderly held, I feel lighter. Any second-guessing or self-doubt evaporates, freeing me to get back to standing up for my values.

Going through the grief, in community, keeps us from getting stuck in the painful places.

My invitation to you is to start to name your experience as grief and to help others name their grief. And then to stick together in the grieving process, no matter how imperfectly it goes.

If you need a communal space to grieve, please join me on Wednesday, April 2^nd, for a Soundings Circle on grief. We’ll gather to write, reflect, and witness anyone who wishes to share (there’s no pressure).

So many of my generation learned young that life is hard enough; going it alone adds to the suffering. I hope you’ll honor your own need to grieve and make the choice to be part of a community of sensitive people that is openly grieving.