Grief support and friendships
how to ask for help when frozen and building community during acute grief
I was chatting on the phone with someone this morning, a New Orleans based friend who I’ve known for years and we got to have a really sweet nourishing conversation about grief, friendships, and community. This friend and I tapped into a depth that I always value in my relationships and have longtime accepted as not a realm everyone likes to access (and thats of course ok!). But this friend and I, I bet I could count the number of times we’ve hung out on purpose. Now that I’m typing this, I’m remembering when I first abruptly moved out to CA to care for my dad, this person messaged me so tenderly, expressing my departure was a sad reality they had muster to face because of our grown closeness that came simply out of being in community really highlighted the type of queer landscape of relationships they wanted to continue to cultivate and live by. We’ve shared space and community in a number of ways; we are pottery colleagues, they sometimes get bodywork with me, we have mutual friends, some shared values, and even though we maybe haven’t been each other’s emergency contact or in very regular communication with each other, we’ve still managed to grow a level of intimacy and friendship over the years that I really value. Just be being in the same orbits for years.
Isn’t that lovely?
There are actually so many people there that I have a passing relationships with, almost would call acquaintances more than friends, and yet when we bump into each other, there’s a knowing, a depth. Just being in and out of spaces together or apart but still near for over a decade; knowing each others exes, seeing one another change careers, hobbies, interests, however it was cultivated, there’s a relation that slowly builds over time that I really cherish. This passing knowing is what I miss the most about not being where the bulk of my adult community is while moving through acute grief. Its bumping into people casually who just in a moment of seeing each other, we can feel seen and held in a way that says “I know some of the shit you’ve been through and I’m so glad you’re here.”
I think this is a definition of community I can really get behind. But then differently and still wonderful, I’ve managed to stumble upon a small group of friends here in the Bay who are close to one another and I feel like part of a ‘crew' (as opposed to krewe ha) like never before. These 4 (four) friends have shown up for me incredibly in the wake of losing my dad, despite us being relatively brand new buds! There’s a whole other sort of beauty in the closeness that can build quite quick, without years of knowing, backstories or watching each other move through the world before forming a friendship. A sort of picking up where we left off somewhere else that neither of us materially know. An “I don’t need to know more about you to know that I want to offer you care in the this time” type of friendship. What trust we have to have in order to let folks show up for us. As one who often provides the care containers, letting people offer one to me, specifically people who I haven’t historically provided that to them, has been a real exercise in trust and vulnerability. I’d find myself thinking to friends here, “even though you don’t know if I’ll be able to return the love, you’ll really hold me in my grief? Are you sure?” I had to let them.
Relationships ebb and flow and sometimes we get close to people because we share an experience or a value. The number of people who have cared for and or lost a parent who have reached out have been really life saving. I’ve certainly gotten support from people who maybe don’t “get it” as in they haven’t had that exact experience but still check in, sent a card, weren't afraid to say “I am so sorry for your loss and I’m sending you so much love.” Ya know, it’s maybe the most basic of sentiments we’ve seen written for us in condolences cards, but it’s hard to say on our own. It makes us lean into that feeling of loss just enough, even for a moment, it can sting too much to articulate it. And I totally get that.
One friend was in town and brought me flowers, another friend sent me a care package with a bunch of numbered and individually wrapped gifts that I miraculously received the day after dad died and treated the numbered gifts as an advent calendar. A little present a day. It was perfect. Pro tip if you don’t know what to do for a grieving friend! An interactive care package!
Nobody here really knows me / they just wanna tell me stories / about the friends that they met in college / and how famous people are their parents ...
- Alynda Segarra, Hurray for the Riff Raff
Anyway, what I really opened up this window to write about is types of relationships. How they shift and surprise us and the gifts that can come when we let them change (even though that can come with its own sorts of grief). How sometimes it feels like a surprise who shows up and who can’t, even if they still love us. They are holding their own pains and creating containers for both feels out of reach. Queer people I think are especially proficient with this dance. Or maybe single people too? Dare I say, poly people are almost too good at it, compartmentalizing our emotional needs to suit the google polycule calendar(s).
Sometimes I find myself piecemealing a little support menu for myself, practicing asking for help, following up with people who said ‘let me know what I can do,’ thinking about their skill set and band width and asking for a piece of help or company that I think would work for them. Is that me taking on more emotional labor to delegate and manage a cultivated care team for myself? MAYBE but you know what its how I know, and maybe at one point was coming from a place of trying to make myself small, not asking for too much from any one person, but now I really feel comes from a place of trying to know the people who want to love me, and to let them, in the ways that are fluent for them. OR if reading this you’re like “Meghan, no asking for help shouldn’t include mental gymnastics anticipating everyone else’s capacity” I trust you’ll let me know and I’ll bring this issue of managing my own care team like a sports tournament bracket to my therapist.
Anyway ~
One friend who lives across the country from me checked in and offered a phone call while doing chores or helping me shop for groceries and even order them to be delivered like with instacart. Another pro tip if you don’t know what what to offer a grieving friend from afar, a list of material or emotional support items you could provide from a distance! In the following days, they checked in on how my food intake was going, and shared some of what they had been cooking for themselves. Highly sensitive and emotionally fluent people are brilliant in knowing how to offer a menu of support items, because they/we know how hard the executive function delegating support feels impossible in the fog. I could barely order myself food delivered the day after my dad died. I was a completely frozen cloud. But goddess bless the couple of people who sent me doordash money, so at least feeling frivolous or spendy didn’t have to even enter my mind. There was food in the fridge but opening it and turning ingredients into a meal was not happening. Using the doordash money and paying a stranger to bring a hot meal to my porch was.
How do you tap into your support networks? Do you ask certain friends for company because they’re funny, while other friends go on errands with you, and others howl at the moon and attend your grief ritual? And even others still are ones you live with or plan a life with? Parent friends, dog people friends, art friends, sport friends, party friends, and then friends who know the pains we know. Strangers and acquaintances who see you going through a thing they know intimately and are brave enough to say, “hey I have an idea of what you’re experiencing and as lonely and horrible as it is, I can sit with you in it, if you’d like.”
I guess what I’m trying to say is this is also a thank you letter. My artistic journey this year is certainly going to continue to be guided by grief. And a lot of my grief does include my relationships because of my efforts to not self isolate during a hard time in a mostly new place, and letting people show up for me, however messy, however uncertain, and welcoming them in. SO thank you to anyone and everyone who’s offered anything at all, however small.
At first I thought letting some of my grief process be a little public was all just for me. The hospital altar (well that was for dad, too), some internet shares, did I mention the private IG account I started that has become basically thirst traps and grief ponderings? Well, I thought all these things were just for me to not feel isolated, it felt almost indulgent soliciting friends to tell me I was doing a good job taking care of my dad. But domestic and care work is so often invisible, I refused to let myself harden and have a chip on my shoulder about it, that I directly asked people to just tell me I was doing a good job. “Providing decent and loving care toward end of life is a noble thing!” I needed to be reminded while crying in the kitchen over all the left over meals in my efforts to feed dad as the cancer ate away at his appetite. But in doing all this, I have seen folks receive these frivolous vulnerable shares and reflect back getting to witness my process has been a gift to them as well. So I decided I’ll keep sharing? Whether it feels like blog style publishing journal entries or something more magical like alchemizing something as immaterial and indescribable as grief into mediums that can be touched, read, felt, absorbed by viewers. Hopefully any pieces of it will help anyone who knows grief, to have some art to comfort it.
And I haven’t even named here the collective grief we’re all experiencing daily, watching a full blown genoicide funded by US dollars on our little pocket computers, seesawing between feeling totally powerless and taking little and big actions to stop it. Bearing witness to the horrors of how much how many people have lost, how Palestinians are grieving entire family lines without as much as a meal or home to comfort them. And for no reason other than I was born by a middle class family on the soil of an imperialist power, I have the gift and privilege of housing and food and time to grieve. So without knowing how else to address the disparities of colonialism and capitalist greed, I will move slowly and cry for Gaza and my father, I will alchemize and track and honor and name and create about all the layers of grief and love as much as I know how.
“I used to think I was born into the wrong generation / but now I know / I made it right on time / to watch the world burn … with a tear in my eye.”
-Alynda Segarra, Hurray for the Riff Raff
Clearly, I’m listening to Hurray for the Riff Raff’s newest album and its so beautiful and tugs at heart strings and I listen to it and weep and and laugh and sing and I saw them live this week in San Francisco. It ended with someone in the crowd leading us in chanting FREE PALESTINE and I felt so grateful for art and artists for helping us to keep our souls alive when it’s so tempting to let our humanity be stolen so we can feel a little less pain in a burning world. We must keep our souls intact and fight for a world we can ALL thrive within! I believe that we can! I have decided honoring grief as slowly and beautifully as possible is a part of this work. I hope you’ll join me in whatever ways help you feel alive.
Other things I’m sitting with:
I made a Dead Dad’s Club sticker and if you are “in the club,” and you want one, send me a message and I’ll mail it to you! Otherwise you can buy one for $5. They haven’t arrived yet from the printers, but they’ll look like this:
What other stickers should I make? Paid subscribers, how do you feel about sticker perks?
I found a copy of The Listening Path by Julia Cameron and after never really finishing The Artist’s Way (another book by this author) or fully committing to the practice of “morning pages” she espouses, I have recommitted, inspired by the shift in direction about it through the lens of deep listening.
I also am making another round of grief cups, because duh I can’t stop talking about it, so I’ll also clay about it! If you want to pre order or custom a cup specific to the texture of grief you or a loved one is going through, you can custom order pottery with me here.
I am also listening to The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller (was recommended to me by a client years ago) and am really enjoying tinkering away at making pots while listening on days that I can’t manage to absorb anything other than grief.
I’ll be soon creating a pre order item in my online shoppe for another round of watermelon earrings for Palestine. Keep an eye out on IG or message me if you already know you want to buy a pair! Last time I donated 40% of proceeds to gofundmes for families evacuating. I’m open to suggestions on trusted places to send money. Message me your sources!
ps. the thirst trap grief IG is for friends mostly but will eventually become a zine available for whoever can handle that and wants to buy it for $10-$15 tehe. Stay tuned!
Until next time beloveds,
Meghan