shades of grief, a series
an exploration on how we openly mourn what we’ve lost, what we might lose, and the inevitability of our demise
turning 30 forced me to think about the transformation that often happens when we exit our 20’s. we leave behind our first saturn return— and enter (or the guise) our adulthood. saying goodbye to my twenties felt like a funeral, only one that i was actually excited to attend.
maybe it was because i could bid adieu to the idea of going out every weekend without expectations. or maybe it’s because i let go of so many people, things, places, ideas— just so much loss over the course of the last decade, that it felt good to finally send that era off on a funeral pyre and burn it to the high heavens. mostly, i think, it was a way for me to express gratitude to the previous decades before me, and to feel excited about what lies ahead.
maybe it’s because we’re at the end of scorpio season, but i embrace the renewed acceptance of the inevitability of endings. whether it be natural conclusions: with the seasons, we watch as time does its work on nature itself, as leaves fall and decay on the ground. or, as i live in an urban environment, the corpses of pizza rats and bird friends that end up on the sidewalk for scavengers to pick and feet like mine to avoid.
the time of the year contextualises our seasonal cycles and emphasises every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end (as the famed semisonic once sang at the end of an evening.)
one of the series that i’ve been wanting to write most is an exploration of grief. this is the start of it.
i know this idea isn’t original, and many of my musings and meditations will play off beloved authors like mimi zhu, whose be not afraid of love serves as a soothing balm. but i’ve found myself drawn to it as i’ve watched my loved ones deal with the loss of family members, and mainly, because i want to draw on the month-long series of grief about losing someone dear to me (though they aren’t physically gone from this realm) and expand it to other forms of loss.
many cultures, but especially american culture, do not teach its people how to grieve openly. we deny ourselves the opportunities to speak about death, and yet, we glamourise and ponder over it to the point of obsession. keith durkin writes about the contradiction of american death culture, in that we are a death-denying culture, yet consistently put out sources of media that scrutinise and trivialise death for entertainment purposes. many of them desensitise consumers to the reality of loss— particularly when it comes to violent, sudden deaths.
as part of my ongoing coursework towards my future as a full-spectrum life and death worker (i’ll expand on this once it actually happens,) i had to take a developmental psychology course, and the most poignant part of it was the last module, where we talked about end of life, and the transition that comes with it. obviously, elisabeth kübler-ross and her stages of dying (commonly known as her ‘stages of grief’) of anger, bargaining, denial, depression and acceptance were highlighted.
one of the strangest things is how often we avoid talking about death, or even more so, how we avoid talking about difficult topics because of the fear that surrounds them. so i’m here to put a voice to some of these hard topics. to examine them closely and post up interviews with friends, collaborators, (former and current) lover(s), chosen family, and strangers, and compile them into a series that i’m calling: shades of grief.
i want to talk about the hard shit with people.
i want to be able to talk about mourning openly, to be able to announce my pain as it cuts me wide open and to share that with others. if you don’t want to come along for the ride, you don’t have to— this series will be open to paid subscribers only (with the first one after this essay.) but i’d love for you to join me on a journey through this world and the hard topics, particularly relating to grief, that encompass our way of life.
through processing grief, we are celebrating the love that was once there.
i hope to meet you on this journey and that we can sit and talk about this all.
see you soon x
Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. By living our lives, we nurture death.
~ Haruki Murakami
the index of shades of grief
this will be updated periodically as new essays are added. most of these will be for paid subscribers only, but the first series on break-ups (written before the official series started) is free to read.