On grief

Losing my job gutted me. Now, I'm putting my guts back together through good old-fashioned selfishness.

Don’t want to read? Listen to me read this newsletter to you instead.

Hi there. I’m really glad you clicked on this link. I’ve really dropped the ball with this blog, and I am sorry. You aren’t getting what you paid for, and that’s what we call a “business failure.”

This is not an excuse, but I would call this edition of Annalytical a bit of an explanation for why I seemingly fell off the earth. I am alive, and I feel more alive than ever because I’m choosing to embrace the process of grief.

A lot has changed in my world in the last few months. Basically everything except my address is different. I don’t feel the need to list the ways in which my life has been turned upside down, but rest assured you’ll hear more about it later.

For now, I want to talk about the first major change in my life which was the loss of my job as a journalist. I was laid off in February literally the day I was scheduling the one-year celebration of my now-extinct newsletter, Matter of Faith.

I lost my job the day I turned in the final draft for one-year anniversary celebration of the newsletter. That edition was never published. I do feel sad about that. While I can’t share exact details, I can tell you had a robust list of more than a few thousand subscribers to my newsletter.

As a woman who was once a kid who felt like no one in authority wanted to listen to her ideas and insights about reality, this newsletter gave me a power I didn’t know I craved. To know that people were reading my reporting, listening to my insights and responding either directly to me via email or by sharing my work, made me feel like I was really doing something. People were listening and responding, and that was all I ever wanted from the authorities in my life who dismissed me for years and years.

All these recent changes in my life have made me doubt many things about myself, but I have never lost confidence in my intelligence and ability to break down and explain complex things to people. Knowing and helping others know things is my superpower. It feels like a gift from God. I cherish this part of me and still have confidence in my capability to do so.

But having something so empowering (my job writing about the things I was passionate about) taken from me has been devastating. As I watch the news now, I feel a sense of panic. It’s a sense that I’m missing out, that there are stories that need to be told that only I can tell.

Deep down, I know that there are plenty of people who can tell those stories. The universe does not need me to spread universal truth. In the end, the truth will win, even if there is death and suffering in the process.

My journalism work also gave me a deep sense of satisfaction that powerful people were listening. As a girl from Alabama, even in college I was told that the way I talked made me sound uneducated. I was told that no one important was going to take me seriously because of where I was from and the tone of my voice.

As a woman who grew up in a religious environment where women’s voices aren’t taken seriously, I already had one strike against me. Strike two was where I was from. Strike three was getting laid off.

What I’ve learned in the last few weeks was the power I was grieving was not real: it was numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, not people I knew who were helped by some bit of information I shared. Those people I still remember. I saved your emails, Instagram messages and texts where you shared your story and thanked me for sharing mine. The real power journalism gave me was connection, not influence.

Human connection is what we are still so deeply lacking even as we are “recovering” from the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s be honest, we were lacking connection long before COVID-19 was a term in our vocabulary, but the forced isolation put a magnifying glass on what we were all lacking.

I’ve finally accepted that the only part of the world I can change is me and my surroundings. I can’t even change my friends, my partner or my family. I can only change me. In the spirit of making changes, I’m sharing my experience of grief.

Now, I feel like my power is mine again. It’s not power being used by a publisher to gain clicks, subscribers and (ultimately) dollars on the bottom line. Now, the bottom line is me. I’m having to seriously ask myself what I need and what I want to be the best me. No longer am I searching for what you need. I’m finding me.

Typing that feels self-centered. It is. Power over me is the only real power I have. Accepting this singular control over me has been the ego death of a lifetime for me. Finding this truth has and will change my life for the better.

Being honest about my pain and loss has also been gut-wrenching. For a very long time I thought I was a brain in a jar driving a body through this lifetime. That is not true. If you believe this, please, take my hand and join me in the reality that your mind and your body are connected. They are working together to tell you what you need all the time. We’ve become far too skilled at ignoring this inner voice and doing whatever we feel is necessary to feel okay. I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to not be okay, but to also ask you to look deep inside and ask yourself about the ways you’ve tried to control your environment instead of yourself.

Only you know what you need, and I promise that feeding a sense that the world depends on you will only make you miserable. Accepting my position in life as no longer a journalist in what is sure to be the most raucous presidential election in the modern area feels like pulling out my own teeth.

In fact, I think I would rather be forced to remove my own teeth than to feel this powerless. I don’t like having teeth anyway. They’re an expensive and time consuming body part to take care of. Now that I don’t have health insurance, taking care of my teeth takes a whole new meaning. But it’s not just my teeth, it’s all of me that needs more selfish attention.

What parts of you have you neglected in the spirit of feeling in control or feeling important? I’m sure you could write me a list.

Alas, despite being laid off, I’m still screaming (well writing) into the void, as evidenced by this newsletter.

If my honesty has made you feel seen in some way, would you consider subscribing? Subscribe not to pad my ego, but to connect with another human being who is doing their darndest (despite their faults) to be a better human.