It’s taken me a long time to reach the inflection point of my relentless posting about love, loss, and grief—where I’m finally asking what any of it has afforded me.
The person I want to be tomorrow is nothing like me today.
The clouds did not part, and light did not fall at my feet, showing me the path forward. I’ll own that I’m slow and fixed in my ways. It seems that, at this age, I may be lacking object permanence. Everything I could learn from what surrounds me feels like it doesn’t exist. Only my yapping into the void feels real. AKA, I’ve been drinking my own Kool-Aid.
Since 2011, following Donna’s passing, I’ve been writing, sharing, supporting others, and generally walking in the shadow of my grief. I marvel at myself for lasting that long, since I have the attention span of a gnat. I believed my narrative ramblings would bring comfort and knowledge to others. To myself? Not so much.
I’m aging like a carton of milk. As evidenced by the fact that my synovial fluid is a memory. A painful reminder that over time there is active subtraction from our lives. I’m beginning to lose the thread of all this posting and sharing. Perhaps it’s less about losing and more that the harsh light of dawn is exposing the relative emptiness of it all.
Adding to this is a writing project I started a couple of years ago. A play I wanted to tackle. The play tells the story of a crisis counselor who discovers that, in those he speaks with about their struggles, he sees himself.
These facts became a Venn diagram of my life. The space where they intersected became a question mark. What does any of this mean? I need to sit still as snow to allow my mind to open up to what is hidden in the corners. Listen to what my heart is saying. Not let manufactured cognition mask my truth.
A Brand?
Learning back in the day (Tom Peters’s “The Brand Called You”) that we humans can promote ourselves as brands spoke to me. Cutting my career teeth on sales, marketing, and advertising, this seemed on point for wanting to be a brand influencer for grief and Donna.
So there I was after Donna's passing posting, writing a memoir, supporting the grief community, and more. All the while believing I was helping others navigate their grief journey. Right now, in this perfect moment of 20/20 hindsight, I see that what I was doing was looking for likes and hearts, all the while standing on my own grief to look taller. What I wasn’t doing was taking all my blah-blah, ersatz public journaling and using it to look inward—to note my own insights and change. I was my own third-person narrator.
This cosmic insight wasn’t de novo. Nope, it was the intersection of that play and a random podcast. Sometimes there are powers that step in and point a direction.
The Play
Many of you may know I've been a volunteer crisis counselor for six years. I've shared that work many times. Here Here Here A couple of years ago while reflecting on those I've chatted with I saw that their stories carried small messages for me. Specifically with grief and beyond. I imagine that is true for everyone who does this work. The soft bathing of insight is part and parcel of listening. We see ourselves in the words of others.
The play follows a crisis counselor chatting with those struggling to find calm and comfort. Each conversation would open some new knowledge for the protagonist. It's not that easy for him to integrate new understanding from others. Therefore the ghost of his late wife visits to dope slap him into listening and learning. The truth is always present if we are confronted with harsh truths.
Podcast
Galaxy Brain from The Atlantic is hosted by Charlie Warzel. The August 7 episode is titled “How Social Media Makes Our Lives Smaller.” It is a discussion with Kathryn Jezer-Morton.
"Charlie Warzel talks to Jezer-Morton about how “authentic” has become something different from “true,” and how people’s arcs on social media tend to only point upward."
There is so much in this podcast. So much to learn and actualize. A couple of points landed perfectly at this inflection point.
One was how social media has become a vehicle for demonstrating our capacity to survive day after day. SM is a performance of various personas. I was presenting myself, it seems, as the biographer of Donna. Never really the story of me surviving or my growth.
It became all about the me persona. The likes and shares to reinforce the me as Donna's biographer. I never really touched on the selfhood all of this contained. It was masked in presenting her and the grief journey. I expected that sharing a post about her or my loss would be a surrogate marker for others seeing me when I didn't see me.
So What
Fair and legit…so what. I'm being kinder to myself. Meaning that writing for the sake of likes and hearts is a null hypothesis. Writing to see yourself is what matters. Writing to pattern match influencers does not work for me...a bit of sour grapes here.
Touching grass and stepping away from social media is a relevant moment of analog reflection. You shed the persona and become more authentic. The conundrum is that here I am having this deep journaling moment—and then posting it. Is that not defeating the entire point I'm making?
In my defense: If a reflective journal entry sits in isolation, languishing, does it exist? I’m leaning toward putting it out there, just to demonstrate proof of life to myself—for the moment.