Culture Cue: Grief + Social Media

Grief comes in many forms. It has many stages. The way we hold, process, and acknowledge grief is informed by our lived experiences. There is no one right way to grieve. 

Some cry or moan or wail.
Some pray or chant.
Some feel the grief quietly, internally.
Some share it publicly.
Some slow down and some speed up.
Some gather in community,
And some curl up in a ball.
Some feel it in the hug of a loved one,
And some express it through writing, art, or song.

On social media, there is often a pressure to react to crisis. And while that is, of course, vitally important, if we skip the step of feeling and reflecting, we’re skipping something else that is also vitally important. 

The urge to react and to fix is strong. “Do something,” we say. After every crisis as I scroll social media, I feel the pressure to do something. And that pressure adds to the other mixture of emotions the crisis has already elicited, to the point that it often overwhelms me into numbness.

And then the pattern repeats.

When we find ourselves repeating the same pattern, it begs the question - why? How can we uncover another layer of what is playing out?

Bayo Akomolafe asks, “What if the ways we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?”

In the last two weeks, we’ve witnessed brutal shootings in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX. These are just two of many shootings this year alone. As I watch the same conversations happen again and again on social media, as I see people’s exasperation and frustration grow, I wonder what we’re missing.

We can, of course, blame. We can see how the changes we want to take place simply aren’t happening. We can demand the solutions we think will fix the issue. And we can feel defeated and enraged and sorrowful when they don’t happen.

But what if we changed the questions we’re asking? What if we changed the way we react? What if feeling was as important as doing? What if how we responded was not dictated by social media, but by our own connection with our inherent strengths and abilities?

I believe we all have a role to play. Often the most effective methods of crisis response are the methods that ask - what are your unique strengths and abilities? Given this, what are you willing and able to contribute?

When we try to ascribe one solution, one type of action to everyone, we miss out on a more holistic and potentially more effective approach. This may be slower, but another potent phrase by Bayo Akomolafe is, “Times are urgent, let us slow down.”

In the wake of a crisis, there is a sense of urgency to fix the issue so we never have to feel this pain again. But when we jump to the “do something” social media solution, we’re often forgetting there are a multitude of people who have been working on or living with this exact issue for longer than the latest 24 hour news cycle. And we forget that the one-size fits all approach to activism is really just colonialism reproducing itself.

We need people who reflect, guide, and teach. We need people who research and gather information. We need people who plan, forecast, and project possible outcomes. We need people who make calls, protest, and strike. We need people who help us process through writing, art, and music. We need people who can facilitate dialogue and help us find common ground. We need all of this and more.

We need many solutions from many angles for many issues, big and small. Because these issues are complex and interconnected, they do not have one simple solution. And we need to trust that if we’re showing up to what we can do, others are showing up to what they can do as well. Each of us has a role to play and no one person will be the one who fixes it all.