Preface
I posted some videos on my social media talking about my grief of losing my dad, and I wanted to make a written version here. As a content warning, this post will discuss toxic religion, spiritual bypassing, and suicide. I will put trigger warnings in this piece where I will mention suicide, so that if you need to skip those paragraphs, you can. Ultimately, I want you to make an informed decision on whether to read this or watch the videos. Be sure to take care of your mental health if you proceed.
March 25, 2023 marked ten years since my dad died. I want to share a bit of my experience with grief, the grieving process, and to share a poem I’ve been working on for five years, with added context for the poem. I also asked if anyone had anything they wanted to ask about my grief, and I got one question.
Here is a twitter thread by Lauren Herschel that is a helpful description of grief as well.
Initial Grief
Physical response
In the first weeks of this grief, I lost about 15 pounds. Before my dad died, I weighed about 135 lbs. Soon after my dad died, I weighed only 120 lbs. I’m six feet tall, so I was already underweight, but then I became further underweight. For the past ten years, my weight has fluctuated between 120 lbs. and 140 lbs., typically staying closer to the mid 120s. The main reason for that is my appetite is extremely sensitive to stress and anxiety, making it difficult to eat enough and to eat consistently. But with grief, that became worse. It’s taken a lot of work to regulate my appetite, but it is much better than it used to be. I also began getting carsick very easily. If I wasn’t sitting in the front seat, it was guaranteed that I would get carsick to some degree. It became a normal thing for me to need a ginger ale and some crackers on hand whenever I rode in the car. I still get carsick to this day, just not nearly as bad as ten years ago. The sensitive appetite and carsickness have made reaching and maintaining a healthy weight for my body quite a challenge. But since I’ve been on testosterone, it seems to be stabilizing, and I hope to be able to put on and keep on more weight in the coming months.
Now, one of the most notable lasting physical effects of grief was the effect on my menstrual cycle. I got my period fairly late at 14 years old. I had always had somewhat painful periods and they were very regular. But the first period I had after my dad died was the worst I’ve ever had, and it was an indicator of how they would be for the next decade. I was sitting in my chemistry class when, about halfway through class, the whole room got bright, and I felt like I was going to pass out. So, I got up and went to the bathroom where things got worse. The cramps became so painful that I was alternating between dry heaving and having diarrhea. Then I started having hot flashes. Eventually, I curled up in the corner of the bathroom stall, with my entire body tensed up from the pain. I’m thankful that the teacher’s assistant noticed that I hadn’t returned to class, and she came to check on me after class was over. The campus security was called, and they were able to take me to the campus clinic. I stayed there until the pain subsided enough for me to be able to take some pain medicine, and then I spent the rest of the day in bed. Though I never had one quite that bad again, I had several more over the years that had me dry-heaving, and then lying shirtless on the bathroom floor until the hot flash was over. I learned that if I had enough food in my stomach and could take pain meds before it got bad, I could avoid the dry-heaving and hot flashes. However, it was typical for my cramps to start while I was asleep, waking me up in intense pain at 4 or 5 in the morning. At that point, there was nothing I could do but curl up as tight as I could and endure. I routinely took two ibuprofen and two Tylenol for each pain med dose during the first few days. It didn’t make the pain go away but made it manageable enough that I could go to work, most of the time. I have missed work, gone in late, or left early because of the pain. This was my new normal after my dad died (thankfully now testosterone has helped tremendously).
My body was affected greatly by grief. And that’s normal. Grief will affect you physically. Just as you grieve, so does your body. Give it grace and comfort as it grieves and find ways to help it. Treat it with gentleness and understanding and patience. Work with your body, not against it as you move through grief.
Emotional response
I think we’re all familiar with the stages of grief, if not from experience, then from hearing of them. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But that’s not always how you feel grief when you’re in it. A lot of what I felt at first was numbness. Of course, I was extremely, deeply sad and overwhelmed. But it wasn’t constant. I had times of numbness. I honestly think it was a survival mechanism. If the pain and sadness I did feel affected my body so drastically, I can’t imagine how much more it would have been affected if I didn’t have those periods of numbness. It’s as though to survive this intense of a loss, I had to feel it in parts, not constantly all the time. As time went on, I had fewer and fewer periods of numbness. Almost like when a wound is healing, initially there’s a lot of pain medicine. The wound is too raw to feel all the time. It would put your body into shock. So, to prevent my emotional self from going into shock, I needed those periods of numbness. But when I wasn’t numb, the sadness felt endless. I cried so much that I got frustrated with crying. I felt like I was never going to stop crying. That’s how it feels in the middle of it all at first. It hurt and I wanted it to stop so badly. There may be a temptation to pursue that numbness when we no longer need it as a survival mechanism. But to fully heal, we have to feel the emotions. We have to process those emotions and let them move through their course. If we don’t, they will build up and come out ass-wise, or they will be stored in our bodies and manifest as unexplained pain or other physical issues (psychosomatic).
I was very depressed that first summer without him. If I hadn’t had a job, I don’t know if I would have ever gotten out of bed. On the days I was off work, I stayed in bed all day. At the end of the summer, I was excited to go back to college, to be with my friends, to have a change of pace. I thought it would help things go back to normal. But what I didn’t realize is that the grief was my new normal. Back at school, I noticed within myself that I got irritated at my friends very easily. There were a select few that I leaned on and always looked forward to being with, but many others got on my nerves. I think that was a response to being emotionally overwhelmed, and I wish I had understood that at the time and been able to communicate that. I know they were just trying to help me, and I didn’t know why I was feeling the way I was. Looking back it makes sense that being emotionally overwhelmed and overstimulated would lead to irritation.
Everyone’s emotional response to grief is going to be different. There will certainly be overlap, however, every relationship is unique and every person is different. Don’t expect your grief to exactly match someone else’s. As hard and as frustrating as it may be, try to have patience with your emotional self.
Mental response
It wasn’t really until I went back to college in the fall of 2013 that the mental effects started showing up. Depression and anxiety are normal parts of grief. Unfortunately, I grew up and lived with an ideology that believed that depression and anxiety were just spiritual problems. So, I didn’t really know what anxiety was. When I returned to school, I began my first (and only) semester of nursing school. I approached academics as I always had before. But very soon I began having anxiety attacks. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t start on anything overwhelming. I couldn’t manage my time. (Turns out I very likely have undiagnosed ADHD as well.) After doing only several clinical days, I couldn’t handle it. I stopped going. I felt shame and I didn’t know where to go for help, or that I could ask for help, or that I even really needed help. The staff and faculty were less than helpful. Some of them actively shamed me. Some of them spoke condescendingly. I was set up with Student Care, and they were incompetent in matters of grief. It got to the point where I stopped asking for help from any teachers because they didn’t know how to help me. I was floundering and slipping through the cracks as they watched with disappointed shame on their faces. Staff and faculty made me feel like losing my dad wasn’t a big deal.
For two years, I struggled with all this. My grades dropped. I did only some homework, quizzes and tests. Not all homework, no lab reports, and definitely no major projects. And the whole time I didn’t know that what was happening was anxiety attacks from grief. I thought I was fucked up. I was a failure. I would never graduate college. In those two years of floundering struggle, I can think of only two teachers who looked at me with compassion and humanity, who didn’t look at me with shame. And I will always remember them and be thankful for them. I’m forever grateful that I had friends who showed up and stayed through the awkwardness and discomfort. I honestly believe they kept me alive. With my appetite the way it was, I could have easily wasted away to nothing. And they also helped me get to a point where I could re-strategize how to do school and pull my grades up to graduate.
Spiritual response
Initially, I threw myself into what I had always been told was what we (Christians) do when times are hard. But soon that felt empty. Instead of saying all the cliché things and quoting all the common Bible verses, I started really digging into them. Why do we say these things? What do these verses really mean? And then I started asking myself, if these beliefs weren’t enough to keep my dad alive, then are they even right or good? I started questioning my beliefs, while keeping Jesus at the center of them. Doubting and questioning—two things I was warned not to do, were the most spiritually healing things I could have done. And where I was told I wouldn’t find peace, is exactly where I found it. By the time I graduated, I was so done with church and Christianity, but something about the person of Jesus kept me questioning and learning. Some might say I “left the faith.” But I didn’t. I may have left a denomination or belief system, but I found my faith. I found peace. I found joy. I found contentment and satisfaction. I wouldn’t change that.
Mystical response
I’m not sure what to describe this as. Some might call it mental or spiritual. But I feel for me it fits into a different category, so I’m calling it mystical. Several times, in the first two years after my dad died, I would dream about my dad. They would be different dreams, but the consistent thing is that he would never speak. Every time I dreamed about him, I would wake up comforted. It felt like I got to spend a little more time with him. It helped me grieve and heal. There was a dream toward the end of the first two years, where he did speak. In the dream, I was sweeping my room. My dad walked up to me and said, “I love you. I’m so sorry.” And then he hugged me, the way he had always hugged me. After that dream, I had fewer and fewer dreams of him. It’s like it was either him or the Divine helped me get through those first years. Those dreams always felt different and looked different than all other dreams I’ve ever had. I think six years went by without dreaming of him. But a few years ago, I went through something difficult. And I dreamed of him again. I was hurt and scared and confused, and he showed up in this dream to ask me if I was okay. And when I told him no, he picked me up as if I was a child again and he held me while I cried. And again, that dream felt different. Then I didn’t dream of him again until a few months ago. In this dream I was at an event, like a festival. I was there having a good time when I spotted my dad there. I went up to him and he was so full of joy. We talked for a little while and I was so happy for him. It’s like he came to tell me that he had found peace and joy and fulfillment. That he was okay. I woke up with such a peaceful and bittersweet feeling. I was glad he was okay, but I so wish he could have experienced that peace and joy and fulfillment while he was on this earth. You can take this however you believe—that this is just my subconscious or whatever—but having experienced it, I can’t say there was nothing supernatural about it.
I’m adding something here that happened after I recorded the videos. In May, both of my dad’s parent’s passed away. One of my cousins happened to stop by their place the evening before my grandmother died. And my cousin told me that in the midst of my grandmother talking about how tired and in pain she was, she suddenly opened her eyes wide, lifted her arm up, and said “Well, help me Jay!” I believe wholeheartedly that my grandmother saw my dad just before she died. This makes me believe even more in the supernatural, and that my dad has visited me in dreams.
The Question
The one question I was asked from social media was this: How/what has my grief looked like at 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years?
This is such a good question. It made me really look back and think about these specific times. At one year after he died, I think I was struggling a lot more than I realized. In religious settings, it seems that there is always pressure to make something difficult sound hopeful or not so bad. I think I was trying to fit this idea of strength and perseverance, which led me to ignore how wounded and distraught my body, mind, and soul were. We quote all the cliches and Bible verses and sing all the hymns to convince ourselves of being okay. But I was not okay. I needed help but couldn’t really get it. I didn’t know how badly I needed help either. I’d say at one year, I was still trying to orient myself and find my bearings in this new normal. One year in, my grief was characterized by overwhelming sadness.
At five years, I had been out of college for a year. I already felt like I had lived a lifetime or two in those five years. I was still reminding myself that losing my dad was a big deal even though at PCC they made me feel like it wasn’t a big deal. I was learning more and more about systemic racism and classism, and how religious institutions play a part in upholding them. I was in the process of coming out of the closet. I think at this point, I was setting myself up for even more healing. I’d say my grief was a lot of anger at five years after. I had healed a lot and had adjusted to this new normal, but this was when the anger came to the surface. I had a lot of fiery, furious anger. My anger came from realizing that things absolutely didn’t have to happen the way they did. I was indignant about harmful beliefs and being deceived by people I trusted. I mention it below as well, but this is when most of the poem came to me.
Now, at ten years, I would say I’m at peace. While I still feel all the hard emotions, they are more subtle and nuanced. My grief is now a sort of melancholy. I have let the sadness and the anger and everything else run its course and be processed. Grief for my dad now is like a calm ocean of acceptance and peace, where all those other emotions exist as well, but don’t overtake the peace. There are swells of sadness and anger, but the whole of the seascape is characterized by peace.
This is just about the grief of losing my dad. I have experienced more and newer griefs where I am still feeling all the different emotions. I will say however, that these new griefs are not as life-shattering and utterly disorienting as they would be had I not already been through, and healed through, the grief of losing my dad.
Easter Thoughts
As I was working on these videos and post, Easter was coming up. And I got to thinking about grief in this context. I think there isn’t enough acknowledgment and talk about grief during Easter. With the focus on rejoicing, it makes it easy to disconnect from the humanness of the disciples and followers of Jesus. I think this also makes it easy for us to spiritually bypass ourselves and others during difficult experiences. So, think about this with me.
The disciples found in Jesus, not only a friend that they loved, but someone who gave them incredible hope. Jesus was for working class people, and societal outcasts, and oppressed people. He gave them attention, love, hope, guidance. Can you imagine the grief all these people went through? They not only lost someone they loved dearly, but they also lost him in an incredibly traumatic way. He was betrayed by one of his own (And they were too). He was publicly tortured and executed by the oppressive state. They were also terrified. And then after three days, he was back, alive again. Do you know how emotionally exhausting it must have been to experience that? But let’s take this further. Jesus ascended after 30 days. They lost him again. He may have been alive and reassured their hope, however, they still lost him a second time. They still had to grieve never seeing him again. I think the point of the verses about reuniting with lost loved ones isn’t about not being sad, not crying, but about not being hopeless. Grieve, but have hope.
This leads me to what I have grown to know. As humans, we can feel a wide range of emotions, many of them simultaneously. While we can have hope, we still need to weep. Our joy does not negate our sorrow. Our laughter does not invalidate our tears. We can be like Jesus and weep for Lazarus, while at the same time knowing, having the hope, that Lazarus will rise again. So, in life and grief, don’t keep yourself from feeling the full range of humanness. Don’t feel bad for laughing at funny memories, while you have tears running down your face. Don’t feel bad for being happy or excited about something, while carrying your sorrow. You can do both and all. Rejoice and grieve—both, not just one.
Writing Therapy [Trigger Warning: These next paragraphs mention suicide]
I love to write. I have been writing poetry since probably fifth grade. So naturally, I took to writing as a way to process and express my emotions. It became a way for me to heal. About five years after my dad died, I started writing a poem. It came to me mostly all at once. This was at the time when I really dug into deconstructing my faith. This poem is specifically about how evangelical Christianity influenced my dad’s mental health and ultimately his suicide. At first, I wanted to make a dramatic video of me reading this poem at my dad’s grave. I wanted a shock factor. I wanted to make people feel guilty. I was furious. But the poem didn’t feel finished, so I kept working on it. And I kept working on it. Years passed and I still wasn’t satisfied with it. But as those years passed, I grew, and I learned, and I healed even more. This poem is part of my grieving process and part of my healing, meaning it is subjective. My dad’s suicide was not only influenced by religion, but also by patriarchy and toxic masculinity. There are so many factors that influenced his suicide—religion doesn’t carry all the blame. Although I would argue it carries a lot of blame. There’s a lot of mental health stigma in society, especially for men. This type of masculinity that keeps men from expressing their emotions for fear of being seen as weak. This patriarchy that keeps men bound to duty at the expense of their whole health and wellbeing. Stigma that shames them for any seeming failures. But to add on to that religious ideology that says mental illness doesn’t exist, that depression and anxiety are faith issues—that in essence prevents men from even knowing that there could be ways to get help, that they aren’t lacking faith, that God hasn’t abandoned them.
So, now, I have no desire for any shock factor, for making anyone in particular feel guilt. But I do want to share this poem as a glimpse into my grieving process.
This poem discusses religious trauma/toxic religion and mentions suicide. It has no rhyme scheme, but it does have set syllables for each line of each stanza: 6.8.6.8.6.8.7.
Untitled Poem of Grief
Tall and fit, dark hair now/ Peppered with gray and beard to match./ Comb-over, neat with gel,/ Glasses, dark eyes, and bright, full smile./ Gentle and slow to speak,/ Listening well to my ramblings./ This—my memory of you./ Smiling always, and kind/ Caring and friendly, welcoming,/ Patient and fatherly,/ Showing compassion, gentleness,/ Quiet, yet comical,/ Smart, humble, stoic, faithfulness./ This—others remember you./ Late March, your funeral,/ Rain fell all day, but storms were naught./ Pall bearers lifted your/ Closed casket for your final ride./ Someone then asked, “Do you/ Know why it’s raining?” I shrugged and/ The rain joined tears on my face./ He said, “It’s because the/ Whole world is crying.” My heart knew/ That was true. Jesus wept/ Because of your pain, misery./ The wrath of God kindled/ Because you were made to feel shame./ I could feel grief in my bones./ The grief of rocks and trees/ Of the skies and seas, all nature/ That proclaims Deity,/ As the sky poured its sacred tears—/ Tears you were not allowed/ To cry. Moments etched in my soul/ Before laying you to rest./ Fast forward six months, at/ My Christian college where I was/ Coming undone, losing/ Myself. The Dean called with concern,/ But not really for me./ She ignored my grief. She claimed that/ You were selfish, as was I./ She did not know you, in/ Fact had never met you at all./ She had no care for grief./ I never blamed you. For how long/ Had you lived as a man/ So miserable, tortured soul?/ How long did you have no hope? How long did trying to/ Fit the mold not work? You had faith./ You prayed, read the Bible./ Still their answers to your problems/ Failed and you became a/ Hopeless man, lifeless—a shell, an/ Animate corpse, a façade./ A façade hiding your/ Emptiness. How long did you live/ Lifelessly? Live with the/ Pain, exhaustion, shame? For how long/ Did you feel so broken?/ Thoughts in constant swirl? Enduring/ Nothingness because you loved./ You loved us—family,/ Friends, community. No one knows/ Why, really, but you and/ The Divine. You put yourself in/ Mental isolation,/ Because you didn’t feel safe to/ Let your walls down to get help./ The doctrine they claimed said/ You fell short in faith. Their message/ They sent through rhetoric:/ No mental illness existed./ Mental health was made up./ But you had faith, or so you thought./ Spiritually bypassed,/ You gaslit, and doubted,/ Yourself, kept trying to have faith/ Enough—praying more and/ Reading the Bible more often./ But still the depression/ Stayed and settled in unwelcome,/ Like an uninvited guest./ No, an intruder who/ Decided that your body and/ Mind, your home was now its/ Home too. And there it rooted in/ Isolation. Where you/ Wasted away, it grew stronger,/ Feeding in lonesome darkness./ Feasting on your silence,/ You fear, and your shame, brokenness./ It grew comfortable/ And confident with all the lies/ You believed because of/ Evangelical religion./ But here’s the thing about lies:/ They twist the truth. The truth/ Is there is no shame in struggle./ To struggle is to be/ Human, to exist, be alive./ No shame in existing,/ Being a human. I’m sorry/ They made you feel shame for this./ I’m sorry that what you/ Believed: an empire religion,/ A twisted tradition,/ A faith perverted into cult,/ An unquestioned system/ Of inherited beliefs failed/ You when you needed love most./ I’m sorry this given/ System of beliefs you trusted/ In and you believed in/ So whole-heartedly, bought into,/ Invested time into,/ And poured much of your life into/ Did not pour life into you./ This empire religion/ Tries to reduce the Imago Dei./ I’m sorry they attempt/ To categorize it down to/ A rigid binary:/ Spiritual and physical./ Starving the rest. Ignorant./ Starving the mental and/ The emotional offering/ Faulty solutions of/ “You just need more faith,” “Keep praying,”/ Or “Read the Bible more.”/ As if those phrases were magic./ Mm. No, healing miracles./ As if they have power/ To fix all these ills that are not/ Visible, that are not/ Tangible. Because it seems that/ Seeing is believing/ To them. But wait, isn’t faith/ Evidence of things not seen?/ I’m sorry religious/ Community took for granted/ Your faithfulness, countless/ Time invested, your heart to see/ Them grow and develop/ Into strong and good and faithful/ Servants of the Divine Good./ Your willingness to fill/ Different roles and the life you spent/ Trying to fit the mold// Of good Christian man. I’m sorry/ Your community of/ Over twenty years didn’t know/ You better, didn’t know how/ To love you better, and/ Invest in you more, didn’t make/ You feel safe, so you lived/ With a mask, hoping to become/ The mask, or maybe one day/ Be able to shed the façade/ And live life abundantly./ I’m sorry this belief/ System made you feel that to be/ A true, good, godly man,/ To be a leader you had to/ Be as immovable/ And emotionless as the stone/ That had covered Jesus’ tomb./ As if the Imago Dei/ Of men excluded pain and tears,/ Numbing feelings was how/ To be a real man. But to numb/ One feeling is to numb/ Them all. You became empty like/ The tomb Jesus left behind./ Dark, empty, and cold. But/ This is how to be a real man—/ No “weak” emotions. Oh,/ But do be caring and be kind./ Cognitive dissonance/ In those expectations fueled/ The exhausting depression./ I’m sorry that I was/ Too young and naïve, too trusting/ Of this belief system/ To question, to let myself doubt,/ To dig deeper that the/ Surface, to search for peace and truth,/ The truth that sets us so free./ If only I knew then/ What I know now, I could have shared/ This truth with you, and/ Then maybe you could be alive/ And free. I learned this truth/ Five years long too late. I’m sorry/ You never got to know truth./ It’s not that you wanted/ To die; it’s just that you didn’t/ Know how to keep living/ Anymore. Living with that mask/ And forcing yourself to/ Fit into the mold they gave you—/ That wasn’t truly living./ It was existing as/ Someone you weren’t. You had lost/ Yourself for so long, so long/ That you didn’t know how to find/ Yourself again or to/ Rediscover who you always/ Were; and all of this alone./ So much so, that in your/ Search for solutions you could see/ Only one. In a split/ Second, the pull of a trigger/ You were gone. Forever./ Leaving your body behind to/ Escape from your intruder./ I’m sorry that you lived/ So miserably. You did all/ The right things but it/ Wasn’t enough, no. I’m sorry/ That what you believed in/ Deceived you, and what you thought/ Was love wasn’t love indeed./ I’m sorry you tried so/ Hard to make toxic religion/ Work without knowing that/ Poison is what you were believing./ I’m sorry I couldn’t/ Have helped because I was deceived/ Too, and five years is too late./ That five years too late I/ Knew freedom through truth because I/ Would have share it with you./ I’m sorry things happened the way they/ Did. I’m sorry no one/ Noticed. I’m sorry no one helped./ I’m sorry you felt alone./ I’m sorry you believed/ That your struggle must stay hidden./ I’m sorry you felt death/ To be the only solution,/ Your only way to know/ Any peace in your tortured soul./ I’m so fucking sorry, Dad.
“You just need more faith,” “Keep praying,”/
Or “Read the Bible more.”/
As if those phrases were magic./
Mm. No, healing miracles./
Bullshit.
Church bullshit.
Fucking sorry.
I was super furious mad at God. Taking my dad away from me before I could get around to asking him all the parent type questions I had saved up. Not that he died early because he smoked 2 pks a day and drank a lot of jim beam and not that I wasted way too many year busy being a really really rebellious shit head of a "preachers kid" to want him to be any kind of close part of my life. Nope. it was all God's fault, and it was not fair.
Asshole.
Grief is such bullshit.
Your share is good & tuff stuff.
Thanks.