I wrote this on my TheBird@ni.hil.ist Mastodon (I'm located in Midwest, USA, so this reflects on that society):
Our society has a problem with grief.
For one, our society's institutions don't teach much about grief or how to support others through it or how to deal with grief in a healthy way.
Second, our society doesn't provide time for grief. People are barely given any leave for a death of a loved one, and there's no time given at all for grief that stems from other issues like: grief from discriminatory laws that harm us, grief from mass death and disablement, grief from people failing to treat disabled people as worthy of life, grief from my continuing loss of physical activities, etc.
Grief requires us to be present in the moment. It requires us to acknowledge our emotions. It requires us to seek the source of the grief and acknowledge its existence. It requires us to be kind to ourselves and allow space for the grief. It requires us to adjust our life to heal from the source of our grief. It requires us to act to address the harm that caused the grief.
All of these actions oriented around grief makes us more aware, more conscious of the actions done to us and what we do to others, and pushes us further down a path toward liberation.
Acknowledging, addressing, giving time for, and acting upon grief makes us Less productive for the capitalist machine. Because grief strips away the distortions that muddle our ability to see what we face.
Grief forces us to see the source of our grief. When we acknowledge the source of our grief, this gives us space to act and change/adapt as needed, so that we may find healing and/or find a way to alter the source so that it no longer causes harm and induces grief.
This is one way we can learn to recognize the harm capitalist has done through the fact it is a source of our complex sets of grief.
To recognize, to acknowledge, and address the source of our grief means dealing with the harm of oppression from the current capitalist colonialist white supremacist systems that harm us and cause upwellings of grief.
So it is crucial for us to gather collectively to recognize and acknowledge our shared grief over these myriad, harmful issues and oppressive institutions and actions.
Then we must collectively seek ways to act to address the source of our grief. To change it toward a healthier, more healing, more equitable, more just set of actions and ways of being. Which in turn alleviates the grief.
That's a part of liberation that I wish we would discuss more.
Written by Aidan Z. (Aaidanbird@disabled.social or TheBird@ni.hil.ist)