Not Afraid of the Dark

First of all, let me preface this post right out the gate with the statement that I obviously know that birth and death are the exact opposites of each other. I realize one is an experience that’s typically full of joy, elation and promise while the other is full of extreme sadness, loneliness, confusion and darkness. Let me also preface this post with the fact that I 100% believe that being a parent is the hardest job in the entire world. It’s actually one of the reasons I know I'm not cut out to be a parent – because it sounds like a lot of incredibly hard work. And I’m already so, SO tired haha. I have the utmost respect for parents – y’all the real MVPs! So when I compare birth and death, I’m aware we're talking about very different things. However, they are both HUGE pivotal points in life – one marks the beginning of a life and the other marks an end. But not just for the person actually being born or dying, but for those around them experiencing the birth or death. They are huge markers in this human life experience – I would argue equally so. They are both 100% life altering – you are never the same again after a new person is born into your world and you are also never the same after someone exits your world. Each has the capacity to fundamentally change a person forever. Yes, one is a positive change and the other is considered “negative,” but either way, one is never quite the same again after experiencing either.

So why do we, as a (Western) society, treat them so incredibly differently? I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the past few years since my Dad died. And even so, more recently after the news of New Zealand providing bereavement leave after a miscarriage. This is a step in the right direction. We should be talking more about pregnancy loss, just as we should be talking a lot more about ANY kind of loss. The way grief and death are viewed and talked about (or really, NOT talked about) in our (again, Western) society is messed up. We get up to 3-6 months off of work when a birth occurs (and that’s if we’re lucky!), but we take a week off when a death happens. A week! One. Week. Huh? This grief thing takes months, even years! It took me 2 full months to even accept my dad was gone and to be able to form the words “my dad died,” 3 months to even be able to remotely function at work, and even 6 months after his death, I felt distracted at work. I remember not being able to even comprehend emails because the brain fog was so real. Now let me also preface this with the fact that I had the privilege to work for a global consulting firm at the time, where our leave policies are actually much more progressive than a lot of other American organizations. Parental leave is up to 6 months, which is VERY generous among most American companies. And when my dad died, my boss didn’t bat an eye that I needed another week off after having just come off of a week-long vacation. I felt supported through a shared leave program at my firm set up for circumstances like mine. And in the months to come, I felt held and heard when I was struggling at work, had a hard time focusing, needed a brain break, etc. So I know I’m one of the lucky ones. And yet – I was still struggling months into my job to function at a “normal” level. Just as I'm guessing it takes new moms and parents months and months to adjust to their new schedules when they come back from parental leave, juggling life with a new baby and work at the same time. It’s a whole new ballgame when a new life form enters your universe and also a whole new ballgame with an entire life is snuffed out of your world. It takes an incredibly long time to process a death. Forever doesn’t make sense in our humans brains and yet, death is forever.

The whole first year is beyond painful because it’s all the firsts without this person in your life. Just as you are getting used to a huge change with a new human IN your life with birth, with death, you’re getting used to who you are with an entire person now OUT of your life – forever. Each rocks the very orbit of your world profoundly, so why do we approach them so wildly differently? Organizations need to change their bereavement policies, period. I was incredibly lucky in my situation to have a boss and company that helped me integrate back in to work after this loss. So I can’t imagine what it’s like for those that don’t have similar situations. It has to be that much harder. And people in general (not just at work) start to think you are over the death at like 2-3 months, which is nuts. It didn’t take 3 months to build a relationship with this person (well, at least in my case, since it was my dad who I knew my whole life), so it will not take 3 months to get over it. I was still in the darkest depths of my soul at 3 months in, still crying every single day. It’s been many years now and I still think about my dad all the time. I mean, it’s obviously still on my mind or I wouldn’t be writing this. But at this point, people stop asking you about your loved one because you “should have moved on by now.” When all you want to do is talk about them and would give anything to see them again. It is so incredibly lonely and actually makes the experience worse when people start to forget what happened or are afraid to talk about your person.

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With my person, my Dad

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Again, I’m probably going to piss some moms off here (I hope not!), but there are mommy groups that talk about all the messiness of motherhood – episiotomies, nipple bleeding, the beautiful mesh diapers women get to wear at the hospital, post-partum depression, somehow getting poop in your eye, teenagers that seemingly came from the depths of hell, I mean, you name it! And THANK GOD for those mommy groups because women are finally TALKING about the difficulties (and the joys too!) of motherhood more openly and freely than ever before. Women are opening up about birth and the aftermath (again, both the good and bad) and I would argue many moms are glad for it. I am not a mom, so I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but I’ve heard many of my mom friends say they are grateful for all this newfound honesty and knowledge sharing. They would rather know what to prepare for versus being in the dark. So wouldn’t we want to feel the same when it comes to death? To know what to prepare for? Why aren’t we also making grief resources more readily available? I get it – death isn’t exactly the favorite topic at the dinner table. It makes you think of your own mortality, which yes, can be scary. But, NEWSFLASH – none of us get out of here alive! Not you. Not me. Oh sorry, did I ruin the surprise ending for you?! So since none of us are getting out of here alive, we may as well help each other with being honest about the end of life, as our society has slowly started to be more open and honest about the beginning of life.

We absolutely HAVE to change the conversation around death. I believe this is actually a life or death matter. There are people that commit suicide in the face of grief because it is SO incredibly intense and they don’t see a way out. Or they often do so out of survivor’s guilt. Suicide! As in, they choose to just end it all. Because the pain is so, so deep, to the point people just want to be out of pain. And they have nobody to talk to about that pain. And are made to feel like they’re weird if they DO try to talk about it. “Aren’t you over this by now?” people will say. “Oh, we’re still talking about this?” is another good one. No wonder people want to just end it all! That’s awfully cold and callous in the face of searing pain. And nobody is talking about what to prepare for. Nobody tells people what to expect in grief so it hits like a ton of bricks and you’re absolutely blindsided when it happens to you. And nobody is talking about what they’re feeling at all! Nobody is asking the question, “Are you really ok? No, but like, REALLY?!” And even then, those that DO ask don’t really want to hear the honest answer when someone DOES talks openly about their sadness and grief. They recoil in the face of the truth of death and darkness. They change the subject to something a little brighter. As Kate Bowler says, “the world loves you better when you are shiny, when you are cheerful, when you still believe your best life now is right around the corner…” And she’s right. But we need to change that – we need a world that also (and still) loves you when you are dull, depressed, and unsure of what’s around the corner. As humans, we have the capacity to do so many things – we recently created a vaccine for a global pandemic in record time. Yet somehow, we can’t hold space for and love people in both their shininess and in their desperation and sadness. Why do we constantly turn away from the latter? Because we aren’t taught as a society about how to talk about our own darkness and our own grief. This HAS to change. I don’t have the answer, but it’s my mission to be a safe space for people to open up about their sadness.

Now I realize this is a personal blog and I’m speaking about my own personal experience – I know not everyone wants to always talk about these things and some people cope with dark, hard things by not talking about said dark, hard things. I get it. I really do. I’m a 4 on the enneagram and we’re known as the ones that can handle alllll the emotions and feel allll the things. Not everyone wants to go there emotionally, so I know I may not be your cup of tea. But clearly, the amount of people on anti-depressants in this country and the suicide rates sky rocketing means people are living in the hell of their own minds. And often doing so alone. And I know it’s not always death or grief related but COME ON – something is obviously amiss. And again, if I can help one person feel they are able to talk about their grief (there is grief in divorce, miscarriage, loss of a job, it’s not always a death) and open up about their pain, I will have succeeded in this life. I think it was Mr. Rogers that said, “People have said, ‘Don’t cry’ to other people for years and years, and all it has ever meant is, ‘I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.’ I’d rather have them say, ‘Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.’” My goal is to be this person to other human beings. I see your pain. I can handle you in your darkness. And I’m not afraid.