K.C. Clifford
Grief is an Equalizer

#TruthBooking: Grief is an equalizer on the human playing field. No one is immune to it. Grief has no respect for our timelines, our plans, or our need to appear put together. Most of us operate on the surface of life’s ocean with little regard for grief’s impact until suddenly one day we find it’s our turn to be churned around in the undertow. Grief leaves us wondering if we will ever get to come up for air.

I was on stage with a friend recently. She looked out at the large crowd and remarked that if every person in the audience were to reach out to our left and right, in front of us or behind, chances are we would all connect with another human who has experienced deep loss. It’s an image that hasn’t left me, especially since we’re in the throes of the holiday season. During a time that is hyped as merry and bright, the grieving walk among us. In my own life, I can think of those grieving the loss of a spouse, a father, a child, a grandmother, a dear friend, a partner, a mentor, and a pregnancy. Traditions can never be the same, and the search for the so-called “new normal” leaves us navigating the season which brings not tidings of joy, but waves of sadness. There is an empty chair at the table, a stocking missing from the mantle. The holidays can serve as a magnifying glass making loneliness and loss loom large.

Every single one of us experiences grief in our lives. For some of us in 2019, the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s will be a painful exercise in merely surviving the next thing.

Grief is an Equalizer

Racism

Radical Kindness

Radical Kindness

#TruthBooking: I cannot even fathom how it has felt to live as an American person of color or a person of Jewish faith this weekend, much more in this lifetime. I will never know what it feels like to watch hate-filled people freely marching in the streets of this nation- and to know without question that hate is directed at me. I grieve deeply considering the trauma one must experience as those images and realities wash over and sink into the psyches of the people being targeted with that hatred. If I'm honest, I know there are ways in which I have been complicit in my comfortable bubble and have benefitted from a system that champions the privilege that comes with the pigment of my skin and the place I choose to worship. Something has to change and tonight I know starts with me...