from Survivors Guilt
LOVE NOTE TO THE GRIEVING
I see you.
Doing the best you can.
You didn’t ask for this and yet, it is yours to carry.
So how will you carry it?
Slung over your shoulder?
On your back?
In your hands?
Maybe in your heart?
Or your mouth?
Or your memories?
You have survived for a reason.
Reasons you can give shape to.
The future is just the next breath we have yet to take.
BREATHE.
Survivor’s Guilt by Julia Mallory is a monumental meditation on grief and the aftermath of loss. Born from the author’s lived experience with personal tragedy – her 17-year-old son Julian was killed in 2017, three weeks after his birthday. Survivor’s Guilt wrestles with the curious reality that parenting while Black has never been a neutral existence.
Grief is universal and still an emotional experience that too few feel they can afford to participate in. Who gets to grieve and for how long? What do we do when people defy our expectations around what they should do with their feelings?
While we may know more about trauma than ever before, what is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to many communities where the trauma is not “post” but instead perpetual and persistent. How does our online connectivity affect our grief? And what do we do with our collective grief?
