No, I will not "get over it."

Disenfranchised Grief

Today would have been her 26th birthday.

I’ve written about my young friend who died of a combination of a suicide attempt and medical errors, right before Christmas 2022. Here is an article I just published about grief: Why Can’t You Just Get Over It?

I’m very grateful to Sam Snodgrass of Broken No More for spending some time explaining disenfranchised grief to me. Sam told me:

Deaths society deems self-inflicted, such as from AIDS, suicide or overdose are all seen as unworthy of acceptance by society and the grief is disenfranchised. 

That somehow made it click in my head. I felt guilty for grieving. Once I understood the concept of disenfranchised grief, I stopped feeling guilty.

Americans, except for our small percentage of Jews, do not do grief very well. Pretending it never happened is normal. “Moving on” just a few minutes after you lose someone you love is what you’re supposed to do.

I am so glad I was at Shabbat services at my synagogue on the one-year anniversary of her death. Yahrzeit. I had not known the word before I started attending services, but the calendar fell out that way. Instead of crying alone in my apartment, I got to speak her name aloud in the synagogue. People I had never met came up to me to say, “May her memory be a blessing.”

I will never forget her, but I am no longer paralyzed by grief.

There is no answer to the question, “Why her?” There is no answer to the question, “Is there something I could have done?” There is nothing that will ever make it right or okay that she died.

The concept that there is a hierarchy of grief, and that some grief is acceptable while other grief is not, made it harder for me to survive the terrible time after her passing. It has been suggested that I join a grief support group and perhaps I will. But I find that doing positive things helps a lot.

She would have wanted us to go on.

I have not been able to bake protein cookies since she died. Read the article and you will see why.

Also, I have to clean the oven. I think something boiled over in there because when I turn it on it sets off the smoke alarm!

By the grace of God and Easy-Off, I will find the strength to clean the oven. Then I will bake protein cookies again. I have strawberry protein powder that I bought right before she died. I have not opened it.

It’s almost spring. Time for new life. Time for strawberry banana protein cookies.

I’ll post the recipe.

Vibrant beauty was all her. May it live forever.