I purchased the URL for It’s Okay to Grieve on November 22, 2024. I scanned old diary entries and my brain dump notebook for when the idea first came to me exactly, so the date I purchased the URL was the best reference I could find.
November 2024 marked 14 months without my Papa, and he was always the inspiration for it. I didn’t know I could experience pain like that until I lost him. It felt like no one could possibly come close to understanding, but my big sister, Alicia, always my strength, always there to support me.
I was continuously faced with the reality that in most modern cultures, death, dying, dead, grief… are all four-letter words. I honestly don't think that, as a collective, we are cold to the fact of the matter: everyone dies. But like many things, people get uncomfortable talking about it. And most people cannot deal with being uncomfortable. It’s why it’s so hard to have productive conversations at large on topics like death, race, sex, politics and religion.
I felt like the world was rushing me to get over it, but the truth was I needed to feel every single bit of it, as painful as it was. I couldn’t keep it in a box 8 hours a day and only let it out in the darkest corners of my solitude.
Think about it, most employers give employees 1-3 days of bereavement. How do you process 34 years of love and grief in a few days? You don’t. You lose friends, you change, you have less to give and can’t take much more. Your whole world has shifted, but the rest of the world carries on and you’re expected to brace yourself and go along with it. I liken it to being told to jump on a moving train with a broken foot and a broken arm.
Society teaches, "Okay, you had this huge loss. Once you bury them and 'say goodbye,' you should be good to jump back right into life."
The truth? When everything happens, you are in a haze of grief, shock and to-dos. After the funeral, the check-ins slow down, and you suddenly feel like you should be ready to jump back into the world as if nothing has changed. Sara Bareilles puts it beautifully in her song Home, from her upcoming album Good Grief. "I was taught to bury with the dead, the presence of my grief." But that's when the real grieving starts.
“I was taught to bury with the dead, the presence of my grief.”
-Sara Barelies, Home from the upcoming album Good Grief.
It’s Okay to Grieve was inspired by that journey. I have been wanting to start it since 2024 but decided to take it slow and wait till I could show up for it and have it be what I wanted it to be, a safe place for grievers. A resource for mourners and their loved ones.
When my Dad unexpectedly died in June of last year, this was an entirely different type of grief. Our relationship was VERY complicated, and probably a huge reason I was so close to my Papa. This grief was complex in a new way to me. In a conflicted way, I had so many questions, so much anger and sadness, and so much confusion. The journey almost immediately highlighted to me that this type of grief needed support, too.
When your relationship with the dead was strained, or you felt your story was incomplete. Losing a parent is hard regardless, but I never felt so alone in anything in my life. My dad was unmarried and had no other living children, and it became my responsibility to wrap up his affairs, like closing down a restaurant at night. I feel like the death of a parent moves you into a new level of adulthood. I was 35 the day I found out my father was gone, and now, almost a year later, I am not the same person.
As I've watched my loved ones experience their own catastrophic losses this past year, I know that you don’t understand until you understand. I know that some of the most healing and comforting conversations I’ve had have been with therapists and others who have experienced big loss.
Another reason I wanted to create this space is because grief is complex. I feel like we often try to sanitize it. “Oh, don’t cry too loud at the funeral.” “Don’t bring them up too much. It makes people uncomfortable.”As I’ve navigated this past year, I’ve stopped lying about it. When people ask how I’m doing, I don’t automatically say fine. When I ask my friends on their own journey of grief, and they respond with “fine” or “I’m holding up okay,” I quickly remind them that they don’t need to do that with me.
It's not always, "I miss them." Sometimes it's, "I am so mad at him." I want this place to be a place where you can say both. Where you don't have to put up a front or wear, you can just be however you need to be.
I thought I understood how painful life could be. I’d seen a lot of death in my life. My first memory of death is my friend Corey, the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade. I’d lost other friends and close loved ones. Nicolas, Danny, James, Cousin Angela, Aunt Gina, Aunt Joyce, Granny, and Uncle Calvin, to name a few.
I hope to share each of their stories with you on this journey.
So yeah, I’d experienced death and loss before, but nothing could have prepared me for losing a parental figure, my Papa, and an actual parent, my Dad, in less than 2 years of each other.
That is why I started It’s Okay To Grieve.
What to expect:
A safe space to share your experiences, thoughts, and feelings around grief.
Resources to help you live with grief (coming soon).
More personal stories, diary entries, and raw truth about death and grief.
You can follow us here on Instagram to join the community.
Have something you’d like to share? You can submit it here.
Thank you for being here and welcome,
Dia