Sacred Rage

"The past shouldn't be feared, for it guides the future." - Moana

I have learned more than I wanted to know about grief and death in the past year. I knew generally that people struggle to hold space for difficult and uncomfortable emotions, but traumatic grief is uncomfortable on steroids - and with no end point. At seven months out, people desperately want for me to be “okay.” What is a reasonable timeline for that, the reasonable person standard for those of you speak attorney?

How long should my return to okay-ness take? It takes nine months to carry a baby from conception to birth - is nine months the answer? It takes 18 years to raise a child, so is 18 years maybe? We love kids for our entire lives - so how about that one? How about my entire life. I will spend my entire life grieving because I will spend my entire life loving Maisa. The two are intertwined. My grief for Maisa is my love for Maisa. Will my grief evolve and change, yes? Will I be the Samia I was when I went to bed on November 2, 2023? No. I will never be that person again. That Samia died when Maisa died.

Which brings me to my next question. What does me being “okay” look like? Does it look like me not crying every day or just not crying in front of you? Not being angry, or just not expressing it? In other words, I would invite you to consider whether your primary concern is my well being or your discomfort? If my anger or my sadness makes you uncomfortable, please think about whether you are unintentionally asking me or others like me to fake being okay. Don’t get me wrong, I know that you want to see me smile again, but I can also see the discomfort, the fear, and the wanting to fix. I see the avoidance as if grief is somehow contagious. I see you refusing to engage with me when I express my despair, and even more so when I attempt to express anger or rage. Is this how we further mental wellness in our community? (Spoiler alert: No, it is not.)  

These emotions that you avoid, the ones that you refuse to see in me, you also refuse to see in you. These are human emotions. If we don’t acknowledge the depths of our grief, how can we feel the peaks of our joy? My grief is overwhelming and endless because my love for Maisa is unconditional and endless. Will I find a way to channel my grief for good? I hope so, but I won’t if I repress it, if I fail to let it out, if I am expected to fake it, or to not be authentic. Looking at my emotions honestly involves acknowledging the rage, the anger, the fire - the part that seems to make people and society the most uncomfortable.

But here is the thing, the rage is sacred. Maisa loved the movie Moana. We have probably watched it 30-40 times. Do you remember what happened to the Island Goddess when her heart was stolen? That’s right. She became a fiery lava monster. Well, Maisa was my heart and she was stolen from me so that lava monster is my spirit animal until someone finds my heart and returns it to my body. The rage serves a purpose. It is there to say something is wrong. When channeled properly, it can fuel action and change. 

Then and Now

When someone dies by suicide, society typically asks what was wrong with the person. That person must have been sick. Suicide numbers keep rising. Child suicide numbers keep rising. If current suicide prevention efforts were working, the numbers would be going down. We are failing. We need to stop asking only what is wrong with the person and start asking also what is wrong with society. We need to fund brain research to figure out the biological factors that contribute to suicide. We need to consider how adults and society as a whole contribute to the fact that so many kids see the world as a hostile and unfriendly one. We need to look at why the world does not accommodate and accept neurodivergent people and so many other minority groups. We need to examine mainstream school in its current form and how it is traumatizing so many kids, particularly the neurodivergent ones, and failing to provide accommodations.

Back to the lava monster and Moana. What happened when the Island Goddess had her heart stolen? Lots of bad stuff. Fish started dying, crops wouldn’t grow, it impacted the entire society. Suicide impacts the entire society also. It is not an individual problem, it is a societal problem. To solve it, we need to first be able to talk about it. We need to have the courage to talk about the things that may feel uncomfortable: anger, death, suicide, grief, mental health. Ignoring the discomfort and casting things into the shadows doesn’t make them disappear. Take a look at the latest suicide statistics.

Moana had the courage to break tradition, shatter societal norms, and defy her family. She embraced a quirky chicken, faced uncomfortable rough seas, worked with a pompous demigod to help restore his faith in humanity, and confronted a fiery lava monster. She did not do this for personal gain and recognition, but for the greater benefits to her people and community. We can also face our own discomforts and shadows to serve the greater good and our communities.

The path to healing is never easy, straightforward or comfortable. It is not easy to wake up every day and move through the world without our daughter, sister, and friend. Every. Day. This happens every day for us. Maisa’s death is not a one time event. It is a daily, hourly, every minute, and every second occurrence in our lives. We are confronting our rough seas head on. We have no choice. We are approaching Moana 2 without Maisa 1. We can talk about death, grief, mental health, suicide, neurodivergence, and trauma, including generational and school trauma. It may not be comfortable, but it is part of the path to healing. 🐚