On Grief.

I want to talk about grief. 

It’s been quite some time since my last post, and I’ve been trying to determine what’s rising in me to write. What’s relevant for the moments we’re in in the US and world- a pandemic, spotlight and refocused fight against white supremacy and police brutality against Black Americans followed by national/international protests, a divisive and scary election coming up, an explosion in Beirut, humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, racist anti-Asianness and a normalization/acceptability of modern day “Yellow Peril” and “Red Scare,” hurricanes and fires around the country, and more. So basically there’s a lot of real, serious, difficult stuff happening and at the forefront of most of our minds. And we are all experiencing these different realities in many different ways depending on our unique identities and situations. 

We’re also going on with our everyday lives, whatever those may look like these days. We still need to eat and rest and do what we can to care for our mental health and to find ways of human connection. It’s a strange dichotomy in many ways. And the world around us is still moving in many ways that feel like nothing’s different, so I think for me that has created some cognitive/emotional dissonance. If I go downtown to the protests there’s been teargas and riot police, but if I stay in my house and don’t look at the news, though there are a few masks, people are walking their dogs and there’s still sunshine.

So grief. I was initially thinking about this as I just started regular therapy for the first time ever (yay for medicaid including mental health!), and my therapist asked me to write a life story. So I wrote it, and I was struck by how I focused the most on my life up until age 13- the years I lived between the US and China (I grew up as a Missionary Kid, MK and Third Culture Kid, TCK). Living in China was a deeply important portion of my life. Like I feel like those years have shaped and determined who I am and what I value and how I see the world. Obviously my identity has continued to shift and develop, but those years set up the core and foundation of how I seek to live my life and what is important to me. So initially the grief that came from the transitions and loss of those years was what I wanted to address, but as I began writing I realized that grief is also deeply relevant to most, if not all, of us this year especially.

I recently learned the phrase/descriptor “disenfranchised grief” and it felt like everything made sense. It’s the grief that I’ve carried with me since I was 8 years old whether anyone else, or even myself, was fully aware of its extent. I think it’s also the grief that many of us are experiencing now.

Disenfranchised grief is, “Grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned or publicly mourned,” as written by grief researcher Ken Doka.

(Check out a few links that give examples and flesh it out a bit more. They were very informative and validating for me:

https://whatsyourgrief.com/disenfranchised-grief/
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/disenfranchised-grief#examples 
https://www.griefrecoverymethod.com/blog/2017/07/disenfranchised-grief )

In transitioning between living in the US and China, one of the most difficult things was coming back to the States and having people say, “So, how was China?” and being like, how does one possibly answer a question like that? It was two years of my life and a whole country you’re asking about, not a vacation I took on spring break. So I said the only thing I knew to say: “It was good!” But then most of the time no one would say or ask anything else about it, the conversation would move on to something else and it would never be brought up again. And that hurt because it was this massive part of my life and who I was that people didn’t have any conception of nor did they seem to care. Looking back I know we were middle schoolers and that those friends had no way to know what they could have asked and I didn’t know how to share with them in a way that felt good. Because China is precious to me. And I didn’t want to share my love for it if the listener’s eyes would glaze over and they’d proceed to change the subject. I was still transitioning back to the US during those conversations. I had barely even begun grieving and my peers never brought up China again. I would bring it up periodically, as you know, you share life stories and experiences in conversation, but it often felt like I was bragging or showing off, “Oh, when we were in Hong Kong….!” and so to talk about it too much felt snobby and out of touch. But then I felt lonely and isolated from everyone around me because this deep significant part of my life and who I am wasn’t part of my interactions.

I went to a re-entry seminar for third culture kids when we returned to the US when I had just finished 8th grade. During one session, one of the leaders asked us to close our eyes and remember our neighborhood in the country we had returned from- to imagine what we would see and hear and smell, and then the leader asked, “How many of you were grieving just now?” And I raised my hand because I had been grieving remembering the world I had left.

Do I have the right to grieve for a country that’s not “mine”? Like how could I feel homesick for a country where I was clearly a foreigner? That I never considered my ultimate “home”? It was a privilege and a joy to live internationally, so why does this splitting in two hurt so much? Why do I feel like I’ll always be missing a part of myself no matter where I live? But do I even get to claim China as part of myself? Why am I heartbroken for the things I never even noticed at the time? When I was in China I missed the sound and smell of lawnmowers and freshly mowed grass and cars driving by with the bass turned way up. When I returned to the US I missed the intricate flashing neon signs at night and bargaining. I missed line dancing in the park at night and the feeling of tones in my mouth. 

I have this children’s picture book by Allen Say called “Grandfather’s Journey.” It’s one of my favorite books and I cry nearly every time I read it. There’s a line near the end that expresses much of the disenfranchised grief of my childhood. It goes, “As soon as I am in one country I am homesick for the other.” 

My parents never tried to suppress or shame me for my grief. I cried a lot about each move, and they were utterly patient and understanding and supportive every time. So I had the opportunity to grieve and did grieve at the time. But anyone who knows grief knows that it comes and goes unpredictably. And I think sudden flashes of a certain smell have instantly sent me back to China and jerked me out of reality. And even with all the grieving that I felt like I had already done, there was and is still more grief.

I think I’ve carried this grief with me and that every loss I’ve experienced and every goodbye I’ve said since then has a deeply familiar ache. One that doesn’t lessen over time. 

I don’t think about China as much as I used to, and the missing that I have for it has faded over the years. After all, I haven’t been there in 10 years, and I know so much is different now. China and I won’t know each other even when I do go back. And that feels like a loss too. That familiarity. That knowing. That relationship. That connection.

And this grief from China feels less sharp and potent these days. Especially with everything else going on. But I know it’s still in there. And maybe a big part of processing disenfranchised grief is just to acknowledge it. To recognize the love of what’s been lost. To celebrate that beauty and the validity of the loss. 

I want to understand more the significance of grieving and crying. Because there’s something oddly honoring about grief. It’s strength and impact is a testament to the love and importance of whatever you're grieving. I don’t want to romanticize grief either though because it’s often truly devastating, and there’s nothing good or beautiful about it. 

I’m hesitant to say much about grief that might seem prescriptive or true across the board or falsely positive. Because that hurts. So I’ll just say that whatever your grief is, whether it seems large and widely recognized, small, invisible or conflicted, whether you’ve shared it with others or held it within yourself, it’s valid. And it’s okay to recognize and honor that for yourself. 

So I wanted to share a few griefs here to acknowledge them and to say that yes, it hurts. And it matters. And there are a lot of things many of us are grieving right now. And that grief looks many different ways. And that’s okay.