learning to mourn is a love practice

love can be understood as a movement, a wave, an action toward growing our collective humanity, fostering right relationship to our precious planet, and divesting from hate-systems that cause so much unnecessary suffering.

one of the lessons i’ve been sitting with is that learning to love and learning to mourn are deeply interconnected.

mourning for the heartbreak of the world being a place full of suffering and seemingly unending pain.

mourning for the shortcomings in myself and my fellow humans.

mourning for the disappointments and hurts experienced and witnessed.

mourning for both the small slights and the unforgivable harms of relationships past and present.

mourning for the times gone by, the friendships lost or changed beyond recognition.

mourning for the places and situations that will never happen again.

mourning what is lost in the rapid churning of change, even positive change, because all change comes with some loss.

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learning to mourn is connected to learning to love because squashing down grief and pain can turn to bitterness.

pain, when unprocessed, festers and seethes, begging to be acknowledged and surfaced.

when we squash pain down, individually, collectively, and socially it becomes ire, desire for revenge, and sometimes, outright violence.

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unprocessed mourning can close our hearts to each other, and maybe most importantly, to ourselves.

unprocessed grief turns into a hungry ghost, looking for fulfillment in inappropriate places, projecting pain outward, manipulating, looking for external validation, looking for connection to fulfill itself, instead of loving out of abundance, generosity, and the ability to recognize the divine in ourselves and others.

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learning to mourn is a love practice. We mourn so we can love. We grieve so we can replenish the soil that will sprout deeper connections, more clear relationships, and caring bonds unburdened by bitterness and rooted in fuller presence.

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and also let’s be very clear — our ability to mourn is systemic.

there is some processing that is done individually, intimately, and personally, but the conditions that make mourning possible are societal.

racial capitalism leaves us little space for mourning. We have to steal bits and pieces of time and emotional capacity to grieve.

in order to mourn we need enough stability to not be stuck in survival mode.

we need to know we are not gonna lose our housing, that we have enough to eat, that we have access to healthcare.

we need a community to hold us, friends and trusted ones to talk to, a safe enough environment to go for walks, to want to be outside without the constant threat of violence.

we need jobs that pay a living wage and don’t sap every hour of our time away from us or rob us of our dignity.

we need to cultivate collective wisdom for grieving and teach each other tools to feel, to move thru, to hold space, to communicate with our bodies, and to listen.

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we must build systems that make mourning possible.

we must build systems that minimize mourning in the first place, and don’t keep us stuck in a cycle of perpetual tragedy.

we must build systems that foster belonging, community, and nourishment, not isolation and desperation.

mourning is a collective endeavor, one that demands the end of racial capitalism and the rise of a human-centered, planet-loving, radically different system of organizing our resources, emotional labor, and relationship to the earth and to each other.

building systems fit for mourning is building systems fit for loving too.