Read on Twitter
1/That’s a strange thing to say @Olivianuzzi. I lost my mother at 16. Grieved so deeply I lost 10 years of my life, there are literally moments and people I don’t remember from that time. Then it was about putting broken pieces back in a new way. I still cry during her birthdays. https://twitter.com/olivianuzzi/status/1296639199072985088
2/Grief and trauma are misunderstood concepts in America. I learned that the hard way. When my mom died there was no youth grief groups. I grieved with widows who had lost their spouses. It’s was the only groups in Sarasota for me to go to at 16 (a sweet story for another time)
3/In college I want to a grief group w/people my age. One girl came up to me afterwards and said her father had killed himself for the insurance money so she could go to FSU. She asked me how I have survived the pain this long (it was 2 years at that point) I said, I don’t know.
4/I ended up being a “Junior counselor” in college which means the counselors asked me to sit in grief groups with new students who just lost their parents so I could share my experience. A student from Japan said to me, “Americans seem to have a problem with grief. Why?”
5/ I said “pain is to be hidden. People don’t like to think about morality, it makes them think about their own.” I said that at 22. I think similarity now, it’s just now I know that’s used to manipulate people, something I hadn’t contemplated then.
6/People think grief works in the Kübler-Ross neat stages way moving from one cycle to the next. It doesn’t. It’s jagged up and down lines of highs and lows and lowers, it’s goes back and forward and back again. Then it’s about coping.
7/I learned many things from grief. One is how to connect with people. I understand that the vast majority feel pain and fear, wanting comfort and reassurance. I learned life is ridiculously messy and it’s OK to feel lost and not together and trying your best.
