August 11th 2025

I wish to be authentic, brave, loud. I wish to be myself whoever that may be. My journey is trauma, grief, pain, loneliness. In her book “Dear Memory” Victoria Chang writes in response to racist comments “The racist act is not always the most harmful. It’s the surprise of it. The fraught waiting, each moment like a small trip wire. You never know when you might confront it, so to survive, you live your life in stillness, in self-perpetuated invisibility. And then there’s the aftermath of shame.”

I feel my grief similiarly. Death is often a surprise no one wants to welcome. And then it forces us to hide in plain sight because of the stigma, the shame, the guilt. Below is an excerpt from my creative non-fiction book Devoted to the Afftermath. I’m reworking the book currently and don’t know what will come out of that, but I feel the need to add, rearrange, and releases.

We've tried to make death invisible. Modernized and sanitized dying. Mourning, I’ve been told, is indecent. My mother’s death hidden behind white walls. My daughter's death surrounded by white walls. My grandmother's death, drenched in white. I’ve been told by more than one therapist that I shouldn’t tell people I’ve lost a child. Why burden them with my mourning, my loss, my tragedy. When I am asked if I have children, I say no. I lie. I die a little inside. I live in anguish. I let my pain fester. I realize that it’s my choice to share, but to lie. Once, I told a woman I couldn't have children, the conversation went silent, her eyes darting, no response. Awkward discomfort. I lightened the situation by telling her, I have puppies. Cute, Sweet, Lovely.

Death was still a common occurrence in the last half of the nineteenth century. Three out of every twenty babies died before their first birthdays and those who survived could not expect to live more than forty-two years. Death and care of the body would take place in the home. The entire house would participate in preparations and mourning. Elaborate rituals were performed, and children were not sheltered from the dead.