Gaslighting the Grieving Part 1
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”It’s your journey — everyone is different.”
It was inevitable that in writing the book, “Come As You Are: Meditation & Grief,” and the subsequent articles on grief and loss over the past couple of years, I would piss off my friends.
After all, I am writing about grief and loss, and I am using my own experiences to demonstrate the notions that are so messed up in the world that we live in today.
That is what my writing is about — how the way we approach grief in society is totally fucked up.
My writing is meant to create a connection point with other people who are grieving — for them to say — I feel that too — for them to say I thought that too. For them to feel not alone.
It is important for me to validate the experiences of others since I believe that our society does not do so. We are encouraged to “get over it” and “move on with our lives.” The ignorant often hurl platitudes in our direction. We are told there is some magical process we must move through to find some light at the end of the tunnel.
It is all bullshit.
My strategy for shining light on these and other fucked up messages the world tells us about grief is to use my life as an example.
This includes interactions with people in my life whose behaviors or comments illustrate society’s fucked up perspective on grief and loss.
Because of this, a significant number of the people in my inner circle will unavoidably be mentioned in my writings about grief.
The previous week, a friend of mine who had read about herself in a couple of my posts attempted to convince me that I was somehow being intolerant of others by expecting them to not be clueless about grief and communicate about grief in specific ways.
She told me that everyone grieves differently, and it’s my journey, and everybody’s journey is different.
Bullshit.
Her attempts to gaslight my message and invalidate the truth about grief so she can somehow feel better about her grief alexithymia. It is her attempt to take no responsibility so she can feel better about herself.
