Let This Radicalize You
by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes
August 3, 2024
Chapter 8 | I dunno, I needed a break from this book. Processing time, maybe. I got to the chapter I really needed, which spoke about grief as a necessary part of hope, or a step in the process or something. And it spoke specifically about the grief of being disabled, or becoming disabled. I don't quite remember, it's been a few months now. But I was speeding trying to read through the book and annotating as best as I could because I wanted to have read as much of the book as I could before a webinar led by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba. And then I got to that chapter about grief and I stopped.
I feel like a lot of my life is defined by grief, to the point where when I was like 10 years old or something, I journaled explicitly about that. I said something like, I just keep losing things. And it keeps happening. I think for a lot of people, grief persists in their lives, whether it's one big loss that they still feel in a huge way throughout their life, or it's a bunch of losses that keep happening. I think the nature of life is that we will keep losing people and things. That's change, that's partings and death. But also the nature of the capitalistic society is that things will be wrenched from us. And. I dunno. I'm not in a place right now where I can really say anything positive, but one of the lessons of the book is turning to your community in your grief, and using your community as hope. Hope that you will all care for each other, hope that you will create a better life together. Hope is such a big concept and I'm not sure I understand it yet really. I think I've tried to keep distant from it. But at this point in my life, I should at least know grief is a friend or a family member, and I should stop shoving them away. And then their friend hope will join us too. That's where I'm at right now.