Biden’s super power: not turning away from grief

The US just elected a person who lost his wife and daughter to a car accident, and then years later, his son, to cancer. He’s also familiar with addiction and recovery. Our VP elect is *quite* familiar with misogyny and racism – all things that impact, influence, create, and flow from loss.

As all of us know, grief tends to make people look away, change the subject, put on a faux-happy face. Some folks have described Biden’s ability to hold his gaze on grief as his super power. He’s not perfect (and we have a metric f*ck ton of work to do), but having grief literate people in positions of leadership is a very good thing.

We can’t stop loss from happening; it’s part of being alive. But we can look at the structures that create more loss. We can start to shift the conditions that create unnecessary suffering. And we can learn to greet all of our losses with compassion, love, and support. My team, and my colleagues in the grief world, we’re all celebrating today. This is a good, good day for love. May our work towards a more equitable and just world – where grief is honored and supported as the love it is – be made manifest.

Below, my note to my team this morning, and a tweet from fellow widowed person, Ben Brooks-Dutton.

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*as always, folks: any racist, stupid, combative comments on my page get deleted and get the poster gets blocked. Y’all know better by now. We don’t play that.