Digging around in culture interests me. I feel there is So Much unexamined stuff in my culture. Sure, the shared behaviors and beliefs lubricate our social interactions, but automatic adherance to cultural norms also does harm, both to those who share the culture and particularly to those who identify with other cultures. Grief, for example.
My observation is that grief is something my culture works pretty hard at ignoring. I am white, of European descent, and born to a Christian family in Colorado. My father, a funeral director, laments experiencing families who do not want to have any kind of funeral or memorial when someone dies. The process of grieving is undesirable, not fun, something there is no time to bother with. I have observed other cultures who, at least from my outside perspective, immerse deeply in grief and engage in rich ritual around loss.
So I wonder, can we bypass grief? What is the cost? Broadly understood as a natural reaction to loss, maybe it’s actually imporant? When I consider change, any change in life, there is always a component of loss - something is different, something went away and was replaced with something else, something is gone that can’t be replaced. Change is constant, so grief is, what, constant at some level as well?
Of the many things offered by Brené Brown in her work one of the stickiest for me is the concept that we don’t get to pick and choose the emotions to not feel. Supressing emotion is, interestingly, supressing emotion across the board. I can’t push away saddness and then expect to be able to feel fully happy, the happiness is repressed along with the sadness. So, grief… It leaves me feeling like I better go on and engage with it, not because I want to feel sad, but because I want to feel all the joy.
In this month’s Authentic Oakland event, the theme is grief. Note, this is not a grief processing event. We will play authentic relating games with the invitation to look at them and each other with the concept of grief in mind, through that lens as a crucial part of the humxn experience.
Dakota and I look forward to seeing you there.
-Ryan, for Authentic Oakland