Tending to Grief: Storytelling as Medicine
Hi friends,
I lost my mentor and dear friend earlier this month and my heart swells with grief for this loss and gratitude for the ways our paths crossed and the precious time we got to spend together.
Barry was the first person in this big wide world who saw my potential and really worked to cultivate it. He was my professor at the University of Toronto for a sociology and technology course. He showed me the powerful world of social network analysis that has shaped so much of my life, career, and approach to community. At an institution that is so cold and unfeeling toward its students, Barry was the exact opposite. He was warmth, generosity, and care.
He saw the potential in my writing and asked me to co-author two chapters of his book when I was just in my 4th year of undergrad. How many professors would take such a chance?! How many undergrads get such an opportunity?! My life was never the same.
We researched and wrote about how social networks, the personalized Internet, and always-on mobile connectivity were/are transforming and expanding social life. This was also during the Arab Spring, the first time I plugged into revolutionary movements and the power of the collective in fundamentally shifting the status quo. We examined the role of social media in connecting people to the movement and amplifying the message of radical change. Little did Barry (and I!) know that this would profoundly impact my politics, my community organizing, and the way I show my love for this world.
Barry also taught me how to write and the importance of being precise with our words. “Stop using passive voice!” was his constant critique of my early work. I’ve taken that advice far beyond my writing and into all the work that I do now. As you may have noticed - passivity does not exist here!
More than all this though, Barry cared for me in ways that extended far beyond my career. He cared for me as a person, and was genuinely invested in my life and happiness. He felt more like an uncle to me during the later years of our relationship.
Barry showed me what it means to lift people as you rise, to be generous in connecting others, and to invest your time and energy in building community. Over the last few years, our paths began to diverge, but I realize now how so many of his lessons live on in my activism work today. And I sincerely hope to honour his legacy beyond the ivory towers of academia.
Turning to storytelling in this time of loss
Barry’s death has put into sharp focus for me the pain of loss that so many people are going through right now. The ache of not being able to properly say goodbye. The anguish of replaying your last few interactions, wondering what else you could have/ should have said or done. The bittersweetness of our brief and precious life.
The last nine months have been saturated with this breathtaking grief. Our world is being rocked by it. The immense loss of life that we have all been bearing witness to in Palestine, in the Congo, in Sudan, in Ukraine, in so many places around the globe including our own backyards, is more than our hearts can bear. This grief runs deep. It is life-changing. It is seismic.
What are we to do with all this grief spilling into every facet of our lives?
Time and again I return to the power of storytelling to honour this mourning. Storytelling, after all, is a medicine. A balm. A powerful force of healing.
Amid all the atrocities and injustices, I have found solace in diving deep into my work with Living Hyphen to process, to remember, to record, to mourn, and to honour the depths of these experiences. Since January, we have hosted over thirty storytelling workshops in cities across the country, as well as five intimate storytelling gatherings. Through these engagements, we’ve shared laughter, tears, and tenderness with over 600 community members connecting, grieving, resisting, and healing together.
I wanted to share some of this medicine with you here today. Our community is made up of so many artists and writers of varying levels of experience but all with such heartfelt and powerful stories to share. Above is a poem by Zico, a Toronto-based, Cairo-born and raised hip-hop and spoken word artist. He writes with a sharp, poetic pen from a personal and intimate perspective, hoping his words can create whatever small moments of solace art can offer.
He performed this piece at "I Grant You Refuge", a poetry reading fundraiser for Palestine at Another Story Bookshop in Toronto. The fundraiser was organized to support our dear friend and community member Amane's family in evacuating Gaza to rebuild their lives.
The evening was in honour of novelist, poet, and educator Hiba Abu Nada who wrote the poem, “I Grant You Refuge”, on October 10, 2023. She died a martyr, killed in her home in south Gaza by an Israeli raid on October 20, 2023. She was 32 years old.
If your heart is feeling heavy or even if you’re just looking for a little bit of beauty to inject into your life today, I invite you to check out our YouTube channel full of poetry, song, and dance reflecting on the emotion of our times.
An invitation to ground in complexity
I started facilitating writing workshops called “Holding Grief & Gratitude” at the start of this year. Together we practice holding multiple truths at once, honouring exactly what the title promises – our grief and gratitude. In a world that holds fast to binaries and absolutes, we strive to uncover the nuance and complexity that makes us so beautifully human.
And so, I share an invitation to ground in the complexity of these experiences. I leave you with these reflection questions…
What is the shape of your grief? What is the shape of your gratitude?
Inspired by these words by chiara francesca (@chiara.acu) charting the terrain of their grief, I ask you this – if our grief is a roadmap, where does yours lead?
Feel free to write, draw, dance, sing, doodle, or just ponder these questions while you enjoy the sunshine. I find that I often have more questions than answers these days, so be gentle with yourself with whatever emerges.
In loving solidarity,
Justine
What’s Happening in My World:
My dear friends are hosting fundraisers to support their families fleeing violence in Palestine and in Sudan. If you have the means do so, I hope you consider making a contribution.
Raghad El Niwairi is raising funds to secure necessary legal papers and safe travel, purchase flight tickets, and pay for shelter for her cousins and grandparents seeking safety from the crisis in Sudan. Learn about her story here.
Amane Abunada is raising funds to help evacuate 24 family members from Gaza and into Egypt. Learn about her story here.
Sarah Barzak is raising funds to evacuate her cousin and his wife and child from Gaza into Egype. We are 89% of the fundraising goal! Read her story here.
Support My Work:
If you enjoy reading this newsletter and find the work that I do valuable, you can also support my work by supporting Living Hyphen, the community I founded to explore the experiences of those living in between cultures. You can do that through a number of ways:
Support racialized writers in financial need with a one-time contribution. Your contribution will go to our scholarship fund to offset the cost of a ticket to our writing workshops.
Make a monthly contribution on Patreon to support our ongoing programming.
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