Working Class Love Notes #5: On grief
Some thoughts on grief and the election
“Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living.” — Mary “Mother Jones” Harris
Dear Friends,
My birthday is October 30th, and ever since I was a child, October has been my favorite month. From memories of Mom taking me trick or treating up and down our Eastern Kentucky rural roads, filling my plastic jack o’lantern with tiny candy bars, gummy bears, and an assortment of hard candies, to my later high school years watching scary movies with my friends at slumber parties and telling ghost stories around a campfire, I’ve always loved the magic of it, the folklore, and the thrilling feeling of flirting with the supernatural. I’ve always chased the exhilarating feeling of watching a scary movie or reading a horror novel, a way to let my imagination run wild and face fears, but come out unscathed by flicking on the lights, turning the movie off, or closing the book.
Even this year, my 44th birthday, I filled it with a million small spooky experiences and treasures like immersing myself in the world of Old Gods of Appalachia, watching the new witchy, queer Marvel series Agatha All Along snuggled beside my dogs and husband, reading tarot and studying astrology, adopting two new kittens, including a black cat I named Sylvie, and listening to witchy musicians like Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks. My family, friends, and colleagues showered me with sweet, hilarious, generous gifts, notes, texts, and calls reminding me of how loved, and how lucky, I am. I cherish it all.
However, over the past few years, alongside the spooky fun, something new has emerged for me. In the midst of a genocide, rising fascism, an ongoing pandemic, climate disaster, and late stage capitalism, the terrors of the world are all too real, and instead of the short lived adrenaline that comes from a fun Halloween scare, the existential fear and dread has set in year round and it barely lifts. The more the horrors pile up, the more and more grief I feel, and the more and more this season has also become a time for me to think of the people and things I’ve lost, the temporary state of everything, and to contemplate a future that feels evermore precarious and unpredictable. I’ve looked to other cultures and traditions like the Mexican celebration Day of the Dead, the witch’s new year Samhain, and the Roman Catholic All Souls Day as a time to honor those we’ve lost and to mourn.
We are watching a genocide unfolding in real time on social media, tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered by the state of Israel with funding from our US tax dollars, many of them children, bodies piling up and people starving in the most brutal conditions, and despite the powerful protests across our country and beyond, no matter how many people are in the streets, no matter how many people are being arrested, dragged out from this country’s institutions and thrown in jail for demanding the genocide to end, we have not been able to stop it. Covid has killed millions and is still here, not gone but only mutating in ever increasing variants, killing and disabling millions even though we largely as a country desperately want to believe the pandemic is something in the past. Unprecedented climate disasters are devastating communities globally. Most recently in my region, Hurricane Helene destroyed parts of Southern Appalachia, only two years after my beloved Eastern Kentucky was ravaged by flood waters.
Every day, I get mutual aid asks from people I love, many in Appalachia, trying their best to survive, to keep food on the table, pay for medicine, bury their loved ones, and keep a roof over their heads. I give what I can, as much as I can, but it’s not near enough and I have my own stack of bills to pay that seem to increase daily. All of this on top of excruciating election anxiety as I watch friends, political groups, and families in conflict, some newly estranged and divided over what to do in this election. All the while knowing that no matter the outcome, there is likely to be political violence from the MAGA movement who grow more emboldened every day.
But it’s not just this large scale grief that I carry. It hit home this year personally, too. We lost my husband’s grandmother Ollie, a matriarch in the family who raised seven sons and countless grandchildren, who cooked for her community as a caterer and cared for the sick, who accepted people even when, especially when, they were down on their luck, the worst versions of themselves, and had nowhere else to turn. She spoke her mind about her politics, that she was a Democrat in a very Republican county, and she believed the government should be one that takes care of people and treats people equally. She hated Trump and J.D. Vance and had no problem saying it. As my husband said, she lived her life as close to the actual teachings of Christ, to love and accept others and fight for the poor, as anyone we know. She left us on August 19th.
We also lost our beloved cat Tadpole, who was only eight years old, to a liver disease. One day he stopped eating, and no matter what we tried, no matter how many different kinds of foods, the multiple trips to the vet, the various medications we tried, he would not eat. His liver was shutting down. It came out of nowhere and there was nothing we could do to stop it. It cut all of our expectations and hopes out from under us. We thought we had many more years of him curling up on Andrew as we read before bed or attacking our feet in the middle of the night and chasing bottle caps all through the house, but he died a month after Ollie died, and the house is so lonely without him. Everything is quieter, emptier, without him here.
I am sad and exhausted. I am scared. Like you, I don’t know what is going to happen next. But, I wanted to use this love note to share what I’m going through in hopes that it might connect with some of you reading, to let you know you’re not alone, to remind me that I’m not alone either.
One thing I do know is we can’t do any of this alone, and we were never meant to despite what our dominant culture of individualism tells us, so here I am, writing to you now, finding some relief knowing you’re reading and we are in this together.
In this spirit, I wanted to share some resources exploring grief that I’ve found comforting, or things I’m interested in exploring but haven’t yet, as on offering in case it’s helpful to you.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller. A dear friend gifted me this book and I’m half finished with it. I really love his exploration of the different types of grief we experience and the importance of grief rituals in our lives.
Martha Crawford’s Mortality Workshop. I just completed this class and I can’t recommend it, or Martha’s work, enough. For sixteen weeks we explored grief, facing death, our own and others, being caretakers to those who are dying, how we make meaning around death, and more. Martha is about to start a new round of class on November 12th and she still has some spots available.
Sarah Jaffe’s new book From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire. I got to listen to Sarah on a brilliant panel at the Socialism conference in September and it lit my heart up. I can’t wait to dive into this one.
Mara June’s work at Motherwort and Rose where she leads groups and shares writing focused on grief, folklore, herbalism, and her work as a death doula. She is also in Asheville and is writing on grief, hope, and community in the wake of Hurrican Helene
I’m also excited about the book Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life by Joanna Ebenstein as a way to keep studying and engaging with grief work now that Martha’s class has ended. You can learn more about this book and Joanna’s work on this excellent episode of Pam Grossman’s The Witch Wave.
A friend and wonderful human being Elena Solano is available for psychotherapeutic + coaching services. If you’re interested in exploring grief with a skilled practitioner and/or are in need of a therapist, I totally recommend Elena.
Lama Rod Owens’ book The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors is a great spiritual and political resource based in Buddhist teachings. From the book description: “For those who have the willingness to allow our hearts to break open, disrupt systems of violence, and let deep, authentic care guide our actions instead of fear and hate, here is a clarion call for becoming a spiritual warrior—a human refreshed, serving a vision of a world shaped by love.” I also highly recommend his workshops and online offerings.
Fariha Róisín has an excellent newsletter How to Cure A Ghost and she is leading a Grief Studies class which you can read about here. The class has already begun, but she will likely do more in the future so if it’s something you’re interested in, keep an eye out and follow her work.
What helps you navigate and understand grief? What do you find comforting?
Let me know in the comments.
About the election:
The choices we have on election day are abysmal. Both parties are committed to fueling genocide, mass deportations, militarization, and capitalism, and the thought of casting a vote for either of them feels like abandoning our morality given mass numbers of people will die, are already dying, either way, but I also feel crystal clear that we have to do what we can to block MAGA on election day because we cannot afford to have Project 2025 enshrined into our federal government. If Trump wins, all of our organizing efforts will become much more difficult, some nearly impossible, and most of our efforts and attention will have to go towards keeping people safe, survival, and navigating constant crisis. A Trump victory will only make our fight to end the genocide in Palestine harder because Zionism is something Trump also wholeheartedly supports. From everything I can gather from the smartest most politically principled people I know, from my own calculations, everything that is terrible now will be worse under a Trump presidency so I cast a vote today in Kentucky for Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
I chose the enemy I’d rather have and voted to block Trump and a MAGA takeover. I commit to keep pushing in the continued efforts to end the genocide and push for an arms embargo on Israel, as well as all the other organizing and mutual aid work happening in my state, region, and country. This one vote is not the solution to our problems, but it is an important tactic in a longer strategy, and I’m doing my part to use the grief I feel to make the best tactical decision I can make in the unjust reality that we are in.
I also voted no on both Amendments 1 and 2 in Kentucky, the first a racist scare tactic to drum up anti-immigrant sentiment in the state, and the second an attempt to destroy public education by taking public funding and moving it to private schools. May both of these vicious attacks be overwhelmingly defeated.
I’m sending all of you love. I am out here with you. We are all in this together, and I do sincerely hope that no matter what happens in this election, that we keep reaching for each other because it is going to take all of us to care for one another, to organize, and to fight for the world we deserve. As Mother Jones, the legendary labor organizer and grandmother of all agitators, told us: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
I’m still out here fighting. I know you are, too. Let’s keep going together.
With grief and love, Beth
I am so sorry about Ollie and Tadpole. Glad you have 2 kittens to help you combat grief and fear and shower with love. We cannot save all the people or all the cats, but we can fight like hell for them and love them hard!
Sweet tadpole 💔
Thank you for all these wonderful resources. Adding many of these books to my list and queuing up that podcast immediately.