Black History Month
Dehumanization only functions if we accept its premise. When that worldview is exposed, the insult loses the authority it claims.
grief
Lately, everything feels “griefy.” Not one loss, but many. This reflection explores cumulative grief, cultural context, and what it means to live in a world that keeps asking us to carry more than we were designed to hold.
reflection
Authenticity became a quiet covenant I made with myself this year. This reflection explores grief, writing, and what it meant to choose alignment instead of silence.
grief
Grief does not move in straight lines. In this final part of Beyond the Stages, I reflect on the framework that helped me hold loss and life at the same time, and why a squiggly line became the most honest way to understand grief.
grief
Grief is universal, but the way we experience it is not. In Part 3 of this series, I reflect on the major grief theories I explored and why they could not fully capture the emotional and cultural complexity at the heart of my research.
grief
Grief does not unfold the same way for everyone, and neither does research. In this post, I explore how choosing the right theoretical framework became a deeply personal part of my dissertation journey.
grief
As a researcher familiar with grief theory, I thought I knew the frameworks. But when my own losses refused to fit inside them, I realized I needed a new lens—one that could hold both the science and the soul of grief.
grief
What's the difference between grief and mourning? Grief is your response to loss; mourning is a choice. You're not obligated to mourn every public death.
grief
Wednesday, October 1st, would have been my mom's 85th birthday. It's also, in one of those beautiful coincidences that feel like more than a coincidence, the 6th birthday of my cats Tina and Joe—but that's a whole other story for another time.
grief
Social media platforms have created what I call "algorithmic mourning"—where technology, not the grieving person, decides when it's time to remember.
pet loss
To everyone missing someone with four paws (or two wings, or however many legs)—you're not alone in this. As my vet told me on the day I said goodbye to Samson, "they were lucky to be loved by you," and you were blessed to love them.
grief
Disenfranchised grief occurs when empathy fails—when family, friends, and the larger community fail to recognize and support a grieving person. But what I found in my research was even more striking: the fear of empathic failure, where people grieve in silence simply anticipating rejection.