This was a great read thank you! So in the western world, we paint our faces and hoot and scream over men tackling each other and some of them ending up with traumatic brain injury… In fact, we raise millions and millions of dollars for who probably already are billionaires. But when children are shot in a school and murdered, we offer silent prayers and silent vigils. America is terrified of true grief, because if we opened it up, the well is deep enough to obliterate our superficial selves. And as we know… there is something we can buy, covet or accomplish that will make us feel better. “Wear merc not pain!”
This uncovered a portion of my own ignorance I had no idea was still shrouded like that. The idea of mourning as an active, physical, loud sadness struck such a harmonic chord in me and I'm so glad you shared this idea. It makes me think of the Lumineers line about the opposite of love is indifference not hate. The opposite of grief is numbness, where the dancing and the appearance of joy alongside sadness is indicative of the relative intensity rather than some arbitrary line we draw between those two things. At any rate, thanks for sharing this as it really made me smarter.
I love this, Liz. It’s amazing to recognize how much culture gives us the world we live it. Like a fish in water, it’s so hard to see beyond our everyday assumptions, but a glimpse beyond the world we know and suddenly whole realms of possibility and understanding emerge. Thank you for sharing the knowledge and understanding that you have gathered in your life to help widen our perspectives. 🙏 ✨
It is so hard to see beyond our own experience, I appreciate you saying that. But isn’t it wonderful the possibilities for doing things differently it opens up! Thanks for your thoughtful comment!
Liz this is great. Thank you so much. I am informed by being a psychotherapist, have worked with grief, raised Catholic but not practicing, undergrad in sociology, and active in 12 step recovery for addiction. I am endlessly interested in faith and the power of belief. All of this comes together as I read your article here.
One of my teachers said privatizing problems leads to privatizing solutions, and that is a big factor in addiction. Alcoholics and addicts have relationship problems, difficulty dealing with emotions, and do have unresolved grief.
And this country/culture has problems with addictions that fuel our relationships globally.
I loved your addressing of our unconscious assumptions. Until we bring them forward and get comfortable with them, we won't be able to deal with "race relations" -oh I hate that terminology- and our relationships with other cultures globally. And our individual and collective griefs. We won't be able to do it individually.
And too bad for that, it is interesting and wonderful. I get laughed at all the time for saying Why can't we all just get along.
Once again, we have the privilege of reading a thoughtful, informative, and deeper dive of another's cultural bones. I wish I'd been able to read this before reading Kaveh Akbar’s novel Martyr. I have a much much greater appreciation of what I read since reading your essay. Thank you. And if you haven't read Akbar's novel, I highly recommend. I have to say a bit more about Akbar’s book even though it may give away a lot...or perhaps it will spur some to read. In any case, in the book a woman..a dying woman and an artist...mounts a "display" of her work in a NY museum...It's hard to even talk about it as it is so antithetical to a Western thinking. Anyway, the "work" is simply this woman sitting in a bare room, with a sign urging viewers to sit with her and talk about her impending death, or any thing they want. The way the author wrote about this and included it in the story was masterful and I urge everyone to read this book Martyr, especially now after reading Liz's essay.
This is so valuable to those of us who have no frame of reference for how another culture grieves or how much we truly view the world through our own lens. May we all learn to appreciate one another's differences and choose to live in a world where we can coexist peacefully. I don't think I will see this in my lifetime but it will not stop me from expressing it in my own little fishpond of my reality.
I think you've pointed out something helpful: learning to read another culture's grief is itself a form of coexistence. We don't have to share the same practices to recognize the logic and dignity underneath them. That recognition is where peace actually lives, I think.
Your post helps me understand how and why chaos and confusion reigns in the world. Buddha said "life is suffering". It is. But where is hope? How to learn to go beyond? Thank you for the perspective from your direct experience in Iran. I appreciate it 🙏
Thank you for bringing Buddha in here, that's actually a good parallel. Both Shi'a Islam and Buddhism take suffering seriously as a starting point rather than a problem to escape. I think that's where hope lives, not beyond the grief but through it. The Iranian tradition suggests that when we grieve together, loudly, without rushing to resolution, something generative happens. Hope isn't the absence of suffering. It might be what we build in the middle of it.
I thought suffering is to undergo, like passion, affect. Neither good nor bad per se. Albeit growing pains are inevitable.
Suffering is a word like chaos. Chaos is used as a negative to our own avail... Life requires it. Any logical model , ei language, needs a place of not yet ordered in order or even order. It's also super useful for orientation and attunement: the beautiful all inclusive chaos - nothing is the only "thing" as accomodating and inclusive. And yes it can be disorientating and even destructive - if we don't pay attention.
Anywaysh - just sticking up for suffering and chaos, lol. I think they neutral per se.
Wow... You did it Liz! GRIEF, authentic grief is what "deals" with the "decaying forces" that authoritarians attempt to prevent underground as relics of the past. Acknowledging "decay and death" is disruptive but it's LIBERATING. GRIEF actually exposes unconsciously that the "decaying happening under the ground" is the the HOPE for new life. It's disruptive, subversive! It makes people in the West uncomfortable. I am impressed by your profound experience of the Islamic suppression and what's happening in Iran. Thank you for sharing. I also get you that the "Western Christian" culture, not just Protestantism has done the same "authoritarian suppression" for 1,700+ years since ca. 300 CE and "GRIEF" is seen by ordinary people as a disruption of that "order." I have proposed for years that the "authentic Jesus revolution" 2,000 years ago was not about God, it wasn't about Judaism (which he deconstructed to its essential foundation) but the "FREEDOM he proclaimed to BE HUMAN, to BE LOVE," to hurt, to suffer, to navigate darkness and uncertainty, in the midst of the "decaying influence" of the "Jewish religion" that suppressed people from expressing "grief" from "BEING"... Historical Jesus (not the Christian Jesus of the West) WELCOMED GRIEF and ANGER in every encounter he had! That's to me the power of his story! Today he would be celebrating the IRANIAN GRIEF from people and would be executed again! The central message of the "Jesus revolution" (not the Christian one) was encapsulated in his powerful metaphor of the "seed" that must be allow to fall down, decay, die in darkness underneath and "be allowed" to burst into life... That why in my writings I write about the "religion according to Jesus" (freedom to grieve, freedom to suffer and die physically), and the "religion about Jesus" (Christianity in the West and a metaphor to all authoritarian powers that "use" someone to fuel "positivity" against GRIEF, ANGER, FRUSTRATION because they are seen as disruptive to systems of oppression) Thank you again, Liz!
Thanks for your clarity. I learned a lot from this. Also, it explains in a different way the current sub-culture of friends who are having more and more grief rituals. In this melange of cultural inputs that we live, though grief may be expressed as heavily Protestant, there is a lot of variety. What you describe of the Iranians throughline around grief is insightful. It’s interesting that Mirabai Starr’s Substack today was also about grief. Doesn’t surprise me.
Thank you for helping me to see beyond my own perspective. I have been in rooms of wailing Iranian women and have felt the power of community grief. It is disruptive to the power of oppression.
Such a helpful commentary. Sheds light on my own family grief traditions (Celtic Christian rather than Islamic) and the way I’ve carried grief in my own life.
This was a great read thank you! So in the western world, we paint our faces and hoot and scream over men tackling each other and some of them ending up with traumatic brain injury… In fact, we raise millions and millions of dollars for who probably already are billionaires. But when children are shot in a school and murdered, we offer silent prayers and silent vigils. America is terrified of true grief, because if we opened it up, the well is deep enough to obliterate our superficial selves. And as we know… there is something we can buy, covet or accomplish that will make us feel better. “Wear merc not pain!”
Hi Fanny...glad you enjoyed this. Yes, the form of grief I'm talking about is 100% the OPPOSITE of polite hopes and prayers....absolutely.
This uncovered a portion of my own ignorance I had no idea was still shrouded like that. The idea of mourning as an active, physical, loud sadness struck such a harmonic chord in me and I'm so glad you shared this idea. It makes me think of the Lumineers line about the opposite of love is indifference not hate. The opposite of grief is numbness, where the dancing and the appearance of joy alongside sadness is indicative of the relative intensity rather than some arbitrary line we draw between those two things. At any rate, thanks for sharing this as it really made me smarter.
I like the way you put this...and I also like thinking about grief as a act of love, and a way to keep something/someone "gone" alive.
I love this, Liz. It’s amazing to recognize how much culture gives us the world we live it. Like a fish in water, it’s so hard to see beyond our everyday assumptions, but a glimpse beyond the world we know and suddenly whole realms of possibility and understanding emerge. Thank you for sharing the knowledge and understanding that you have gathered in your life to help widen our perspectives. 🙏 ✨
It is so hard to see beyond our own experience, I appreciate you saying that. But isn’t it wonderful the possibilities for doing things differently it opens up! Thanks for your thoughtful comment!
Absolutely, Liz. I love learning to see things from new perspectives. It’s so refreshing!
Liz this is great. Thank you so much. I am informed by being a psychotherapist, have worked with grief, raised Catholic but not practicing, undergrad in sociology, and active in 12 step recovery for addiction. I am endlessly interested in faith and the power of belief. All of this comes together as I read your article here.
One of my teachers said privatizing problems leads to privatizing solutions, and that is a big factor in addiction. Alcoholics and addicts have relationship problems, difficulty dealing with emotions, and do have unresolved grief.
And this country/culture has problems with addictions that fuel our relationships globally.
I loved your addressing of our unconscious assumptions. Until we bring them forward and get comfortable with them, we won't be able to deal with "race relations" -oh I hate that terminology- and our relationships with other cultures globally. And our individual and collective griefs. We won't be able to do it individually.
And too bad for that, it is interesting and wonderful. I get laughed at all the time for saying Why can't we all just get along.
Thank you a thousand times.
Once again, we have the privilege of reading a thoughtful, informative, and deeper dive of another's cultural bones. I wish I'd been able to read this before reading Kaveh Akbar’s novel Martyr. I have a much much greater appreciation of what I read since reading your essay. Thank you. And if you haven't read Akbar's novel, I highly recommend. I have to say a bit more about Akbar’s book even though it may give away a lot...or perhaps it will spur some to read. In any case, in the book a woman..a dying woman and an artist...mounts a "display" of her work in a NY museum...It's hard to even talk about it as it is so antithetical to a Western thinking. Anyway, the "work" is simply this woman sitting in a bare room, with a sign urging viewers to sit with her and talk about her impending death, or any thing they want. The way the author wrote about this and included it in the story was masterful and I urge everyone to read this book Martyr, especially now after reading Liz's essay.
This is so valuable to those of us who have no frame of reference for how another culture grieves or how much we truly view the world through our own lens. May we all learn to appreciate one another's differences and choose to live in a world where we can coexist peacefully. I don't think I will see this in my lifetime but it will not stop me from expressing it in my own little fishpond of my reality.
I think you've pointed out something helpful: learning to read another culture's grief is itself a form of coexistence. We don't have to share the same practices to recognize the logic and dignity underneath them. That recognition is where peace actually lives, I think.
Your post helps me understand how and why chaos and confusion reigns in the world. Buddha said "life is suffering". It is. But where is hope? How to learn to go beyond? Thank you for the perspective from your direct experience in Iran. I appreciate it 🙏
Thank you for bringing Buddha in here, that's actually a good parallel. Both Shi'a Islam and Buddhism take suffering seriously as a starting point rather than a problem to escape. I think that's where hope lives, not beyond the grief but through it. The Iranian tradition suggests that when we grieve together, loudly, without rushing to resolution, something generative happens. Hope isn't the absence of suffering. It might be what we build in the middle of it.
I thought suffering is to undergo, like passion, affect. Neither good nor bad per se. Albeit growing pains are inevitable.
Suffering is a word like chaos. Chaos is used as a negative to our own avail... Life requires it. Any logical model , ei language, needs a place of not yet ordered in order or even order. It's also super useful for orientation and attunement: the beautiful all inclusive chaos - nothing is the only "thing" as accomodating and inclusive. And yes it can be disorientating and even destructive - if we don't pay attention.
Anywaysh - just sticking up for suffering and chaos, lol. I think they neutral per se.
Fabulous post. Thank you so much. We are blind to so many of our assumptions.
Wow... You did it Liz! GRIEF, authentic grief is what "deals" with the "decaying forces" that authoritarians attempt to prevent underground as relics of the past. Acknowledging "decay and death" is disruptive but it's LIBERATING. GRIEF actually exposes unconsciously that the "decaying happening under the ground" is the the HOPE for new life. It's disruptive, subversive! It makes people in the West uncomfortable. I am impressed by your profound experience of the Islamic suppression and what's happening in Iran. Thank you for sharing. I also get you that the "Western Christian" culture, not just Protestantism has done the same "authoritarian suppression" for 1,700+ years since ca. 300 CE and "GRIEF" is seen by ordinary people as a disruption of that "order." I have proposed for years that the "authentic Jesus revolution" 2,000 years ago was not about God, it wasn't about Judaism (which he deconstructed to its essential foundation) but the "FREEDOM he proclaimed to BE HUMAN, to BE LOVE," to hurt, to suffer, to navigate darkness and uncertainty, in the midst of the "decaying influence" of the "Jewish religion" that suppressed people from expressing "grief" from "BEING"... Historical Jesus (not the Christian Jesus of the West) WELCOMED GRIEF and ANGER in every encounter he had! That's to me the power of his story! Today he would be celebrating the IRANIAN GRIEF from people and would be executed again! The central message of the "Jesus revolution" (not the Christian one) was encapsulated in his powerful metaphor of the "seed" that must be allow to fall down, decay, die in darkness underneath and "be allowed" to burst into life... That why in my writings I write about the "religion according to Jesus" (freedom to grieve, freedom to suffer and die physically), and the "religion about Jesus" (Christianity in the West and a metaphor to all authoritarian powers that "use" someone to fuel "positivity" against GRIEF, ANGER, FRUSTRATION because they are seen as disruptive to systems of oppression) Thank you again, Liz!
Thanks as always Harold for jumping in and adding to our conversation here!
Thanks for your clarity. I learned a lot from this. Also, it explains in a different way the current sub-culture of friends who are having more and more grief rituals. In this melange of cultural inputs that we live, though grief may be expressed as heavily Protestant, there is a lot of variety. What you describe of the Iranians throughline around grief is insightful. It’s interesting that Mirabai Starr’s Substack today was also about grief. Doesn’t surprise me.
Thank for this rec Joseph, I’ll be sure to check it out.
Oh, my! Thank you for this. So honest, so gorgeous. I'll br thinking about it all day.
Thanks Hans. Appreciate you.
Thank you for helping me to see beyond my own perspective. I have been in rooms of wailing Iranian women and have felt the power of community grief. It is disruptive to the power of oppression.
A very insightful read thank you! 🙏
This was a great article, not only about Iranians but about the entire humanity. Thank you 🙏
Glad you enjoyed it Kati!
Fascinating post. Really changed my perspective.
Such a helpful commentary. Sheds light on my own family grief traditions (Celtic Christian rather than Islamic) and the way I’ve carried grief in my own life.