Grief Gremlins...back from the Archives

Disenfranchised Grief, the overlooked and underestimated drag factor.

Happy Equinox, friends! Spring for some of us, autumnal for others. It’s good to remember that we live in a big world, despite what the internet and modern technological trickery might have us believe. And at the same time, we’re all so interconnected. Crikies, this life on earth! It’s just one long parade of the paradoxical.

Before I tumble all the way down that rabbit hole, I have a confession to make. Earlier this week, I had lofty ideas about crafting some clever communication that might braid together themes of seasonal transition and personal growth. A perky little printemps post, perhaps a spunky little springtime sonnet. Something special. And then?

Then, I changed my mind. The truth is, I’m feeling kinda pooped, friends. And so it occurred to me that it might be time to call up a little archival material relevant for these times. These times when we’re experiencing a LOT of collective loss.

No gentler depiction of loss will one find in the emojiverse.

A lot of loss that isn’t named as such. Loss that get lost because it’s part and parcel of change. Whether it’s seasonal change in the natural sense, the social history sense, the zeitgeist sense, or the marrow of your very personal bones sense, unacknowledged loss creates grief that has nowhere to land. And that, in turn, makes us feel kinda pooped (among other things).

I published the post below in the late spring of 2024, before I knew what the state of affairs would be in March 2025. While I could easily have forecast that we’d be in mud season here where I live at the passing of the equinox, I had no real way of knowing we’d be in the mired in the muck of the losses wrought by the 2024 presidential election.

In any case, I feel this is a timely repurposing, and I hope you do, too.

Recycling, good for the earth and sometimes for the internal ecosystem. Back to June 2024 we go.

Friends, it’s been a bit of a sentimental journey this week for Gen X. Did you see that Andrew McCarthy announced his new documentary, Brats? Or that June 8th marked the 40th anniversary of the theatrical release of both Ghostbusters and Gremlins? Amidst all the reflecting and reminiscing, I couldn’t help but notice how different things look from 2024’s rearview mirror than they did in the mid-80’s. And I’m not just talking about the wrinkles and paunch of the Brat Pack. I’m talking about the way in which blatant bigotry, malignant misogyny and one-up dynamics were baked into blockbusters back then. And how I can’t believe I never noticed til now.

For example, I will here confess that I only recently learned from a an already-years-old Dear White People scene that the gremlins in Gremlins were based on racist tropes of Black youth culture. I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised to discover the pop culture of my youth shot through with that kind of toxicity. After all, we were spoon-fed a steady diet of sanitized history back then (unbelievably, so many states are still trying to legislate that kind of white-wash now). I don’t know about you, friends, but I find myself experiencing a bit of a middle-aged-white person’s rude awakening. Like waking up in a big, stinking cesspool of disillusionment.

And you know, let’s just call disillusionment it what it really is: a loss. Oftentimes a one-two punch of loss and betrayal. We felt sure we knew something or someone. We felt so sure of it, and then it turns out we were wrong. That’s a loss. A loss of the solid ground of knowing and a loss of trust in ourselves and in the thing/person we thought we knew. And with loss comes grief, and with grief comes a jumble of things that can really bog us down: confusion and disbelief, hurt, sadness, depression. Sandbags grounding your hot air balloon.

“Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.” [Quote by Christopher Morley; Photo by Stephanie Klepacki on Unsplash]

Speaking of grief, the 80’s (and psychologist Kenneth Doka) also gave us the term Disenfranchised Grief. Have you heard of it? It’s the kind of grief that comes with losses that are not culturally accepted as such and so are rarely, if ever, named, validated, mourned, or resolved.

Let me tell you, friends: there are a lot of these losses, all the time. A LOT. Sometimes these disenfranchised griefs are related to socially stigmatized losses. Like losing a loved one to incarceration, electing to have an abortion, making a decision to limit contact with family, or letting go of a long-term addiction.

This kind of grief can also come attached to seemingly inconsequential things like the loss of a landscape we’ve grown attached to or a routine that comforted us or held us steady through thick and thin. Or trading in our old car. And then there’s the loss of a beloved pet (by the way, are you with me in cringing when you hear someone say “it was only a dog/cat/fish”??).

The point is that disenfranchised grief crops up with any sort of loss that feels significant yet gets dismissed or minimized - either by others or ourselves.

Friends, I’ve got to say it. Weird as it may sound, I absolutely thrill at the concept of disenfranchised grief. Yeah, it’s true. I friggin’ love it. The first time I heard the term, I felt a frisson of righteous recognition and joy ripple through each and every one of of my many cells. Finally, I thought. Finally! A name for what I’ve been lugging around for donkey’s years like a burro on its last legs, and for what I’ve also watched so many others trying to shove aside like football sleds in the withering heat of an August practice field. There was relief and hope in the naming of it, because something that can be named can be tended to.

In my life, disenfranchised grief has come from a variety of losses that are all too common among LGBTQIA+ folks and other marginalized invisible-ized identities. And from losses associated with the recovery from multiple addictions and family dysfunction. Even from the slow-dawning consciousness of the extent to which I’ve been gaslit about my country’s horrifying history and ever-present legacy of systemic oppression.

Disenfranchised grief is real, but it’s quiet. Stealth, even. Because it’s so hidden, it can leave us feeling ashamed and confused. Ashamed about feeling deep grief over losses without cultural grief cred and confused about why we feel so bad.

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.” [Quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash]

We may feel hella bad. Heavy, lethargic, angry, lonely, exhausted, disillusioned, even sick. We may find ourselves withdrawing and feeling increasingly alienated and alone. We may start seeking escape and comfort through substances or other means. Life might feel unmanageable.

What do we need at these times? I believe we need to process the loss and its attendant grief just like we would if we’d experienced a culturally-approved loss, the kind one might get bereavement leave for. Because friends, a loss is a death of some sort, and the fact that only some types of losses are viewed as legit is a cultural construct.

It’s unlikely that disenfranchised grief will be normalized or given broad cultural credence anytime soon. So, it’s up to us to claim our right to grieve these things - any and all of the things that we can feel inside ourselves to be significant losses. We don’t have to gaslight ourselves about how we feel. We can feel what we feel, name it and express it in ways that allow it to move through so it doesn’t solidify into sandbags that hold us down.

Welcome back to the future. It’s not an easy place to be right now, but it’s what we’ve got. Here’s a poem to help soften the sharp edges of 2025:

Between what is and

what you wish had been

stretches a gap, vast and void

but for the echoes of grief

that ricochet

off your granite heart.

And between the flats

where you trudge and

the heights you wish to climb

lies a border fence,

barbed and razored

with that same keening grief.

There is no overpass,

no underpass, no bypass.

It is, as it seems,

an impasse.

Yet there is a way

to travel, the way

of JC, MLK and all

those who navigated

by the cosmic compass.

This way is simple but

not easy. It prioritizes

softness over stamina and

it’s paved with paradox.

This is its cartography:

to ascend, you must

dive deep and

to advance, you must

retreat.

“If it’s still in your mind, it is still in your heart.” [Quote by Paulo Coelho; Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash]

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