DISENFRANCHISED GRIEF, ANGER, AND SADNESS

 With grief comes sadness and anger. When sadness pools around you, it numbs you, and leaves you helpless. Meanwhile, anger gives you something to do. A common reaction to loss, anger is a temporary relief from the sadness, since it masks the grief.

 

Anger is a response to a sense of unfairness. It offers you information on what hurts, and gives you fuel to tackle that grief. However, it is a tricky emotion. If you are not aware, it can become rage. If you already have a well of unresolved grief, that particular anger is silently lurking and unspoken. New grief will ignite it into rage.

 

When Trump was elected President, the dreams and hopes of my former friends were utterly shattered. The pieces of their world now lay about their feet. This left them in a deep well of rage. Since their overwhelming grief threatened to engulf them, they preferred the white-hot heat of anger to dwell in.

 

I suspect that Trump, the man, sparked the silent and denied grief and anger of their past. It became easier to rant at him, then to face that old grief. Now, my former friends wrap their rage around themselves as a warm blanket to comfort them. They still drip venom, which eats away at everything.

 

As for me, I had to separate myself from my friends. I felt that loss deeply. However, my friends’ bitterness threatened to overwhelm me. I had watched my former friends transform into something other than human. Now, I mourn the loss of friendship that we once had.

 

Grieving a dream or a lost friendship is hard. It is easier to rage against the unfairness, the injustice of it all. Fueling the anger is the fact that society has denied our need to grieve. What we have is known as “disenfranchised grief,” (Note 1) which means that our losses are not worthwhile since a living being did not die. However, we feel them just the same, and mourn them.

 

All grief is not the same, but all grief is valid. The death of a dream can be as traumatic as the death of a person. The dream had sustained us and gave us hope. Since the dream was alive to us, we mourn the loss just the same.

 

In “From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Daily Lives,” Unitarian Universalist Minister Robert Fulghum wrote “When we’ve changed our religious views or political convictions, a part of our past dies. When love ends, be it the first mad romance of adolescence, the love that will not sustain a marriage, or the love of a failed friendship, it is the same. A death…. And there is no public or even private funeral. Sometimes only regret and nostalgia mark the passage. And the last rites are held in the solitude of one’s most secret self —a service of mourning in the tabernacle of the soul.”

 

The rite of mourning will help us with our disenfranchised grief. My ritual was dedicated to Anteros, the God of Requited Love (one of the Erotes (Note 2)). Although a Greek God, Anteros has helped me through the loss of friendship. (Venus Verticordia (the Changer of Hearts) introduced me to Him.) By embracing the Children of Aphrodite, I was helped through my grief.

 

Notes:

Note 1. “Disenfranchised grief” was first described by Dr. Kenneth Doka in 1989, “to capture this feeling of loss that no one seems to understand and that you don’t feel entitled to.” He defined it as “a loss that’s not openly acknowledged, socially mourned or publicly supported.”

 

Note 2. The Erotes (Cupides) are the Children of Aphrodite.

 

Anteros: The God of Mutual Love.

Eros: The God of Love.

Hedylogos (Hedylogus): The God of Sweet-talk.

Hermaphroditos (Hermaphroditus): The God of Love in All Forms.

Himeros: The God of Sexual Desire.

Hymenaios (Hymenaeus): The God of Marriage.

Pothos: The God of Passionate Longing.

 

Suggested Reading:

“From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Daily Lives,” Rev. Robert Fulghum

“How to Carry What Can’t be Fixed,” Megan DeVine

“In Love’s Winged Harbor: A Novena for Anteros,” Galina Krasskova