Finding hope in grief
Matt Birkhold
“When in your life has an ending also been a beginning?,” I often ask this questions in Visionary Organizing Lab’s training and workshops. After people reflect and journal on the question, they go into small groups and discuss their reflections. I have done this exercise throughout the US with people of all different ages, races, genders, classes, and backgrounds. No matter who is in the room, several common patterns emerge from people's reflections:
Endings are really hard and often very scary
Endings make us really uncertain
Endings often challenge our sense of identity and larger sense of security
When we choose to face this uncertainty and share it with others–or build community through it–we start to grieve
As we grieve, we get more clarity
Amidst this growing clarity, our uncertainty and vulnerability can become sources of strength
As our clarity and relationships grow, we begin to see the that ending is also a transition into something new
We emerge from transitions with a new identity and become a little more fully human
I am always amazed at the consistency of these patterns. From seeing this consistency, I have learned that, as long as we build community and are willing to practice vulnerability, we get all we need to turn the crisis of loss into an opportunity for transformation.
This lesson feels really important in this current moment of widespread chaos, fear, and crisis.
From a big picture view, it feels right to say that in the last three weeks our collective sense of day-to-day stability has ended. Our respective material needs may or may not yet have been threatened but our collective nonmaterial needs for security and predictability are under threat every day. If we take time to name and grieve what we’re experiencing while building community, I think that this crisis can become a transition to something meaningful.
What’s happening in the US is part of a larger global trend towards authoritarianism, which itself is a symptom of the crisis of the larger world-economy and global political order. In plain terms, we are living through the end of one era of civilization and a new era is emerging. Social scientists call these “systems transitions,” and they involve the end of one finite social system that undergirds a civilization and the emergence of another. Systems transitions involve cultural, structural, economic, and behavioral changes, as well as changes in technologies, policies, and norms. The Roman Empire was a finite social system and it transitioned into the Middle Ages.
Just like we don’t know who we’ll become after a significant loss, we don’t know what we’ll transition into with the decline of the modern era. Based on our personal experiences with transition, we can trust that if we name our loss and grieve it, we can develop some clarity about what’s happening. WIth this clarity, our grief and vulnerability can lead us into actions that can facilitate the emergence of a culture and systems that don’t require racism, sexism, poverty, or the destruction of nature. Similar to the opportunity provided by individual losses, by grieving, we can collectively become more fully human and start existing differently.
