by Samantha Major

Death has always been an acquaintance of mine. It was someone I knew of distantly but as I grew older, I watched it get closer and closer to those I knew well. When I was in college, a close friend lost her brother in a car accident. I remember shrinking away, feeling ill equipped to help her battle something that I’d never experienced. But at the end of 2014, death aggressively became better acquainted with me. Its suffocating presence became my roommate, moving into my mind space. After it intruded, I met grief.

On December 28, 2014, my mother unexpectedly died of cancer. She routinely went to the gym, tried to eat right and walked everyday. But one day, she started to experience debilitating breathing problems. After being admitted into the hospital multiple times, her doctors found blood clots. They began conducting a month’s worth of exploratory procedures. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Four weeks later, she died.


I felt like the ground shifted from beneath my feet and I’ve been falling ever since.

I’ve learned that it’s true when they say that you don’t know how to care for those who are grieving until you’ve grieved yourself. I’ve noticed many of my friends display the same uncertainty that I did in college. Hopefully these six insights can offer some perspective to those who don’t know what grieving feels like.

1. Loneliness can turn into invisibility. 

There is a loneliness that comes when you are without someone's physical presence. Then there is a much more difficult loneliness that comes without having someone's emotional empathy. I remember returning to Atlanta after caring for my mother and being in a room full of friends. My mind was adjusting from IV drips, the stark lights of the hospital, funeral arrangements and then closing my beautiful mother’s casket. It was surreal. The ease of my friends’ smiles and conversations seemed so misplaced in the midst of what I saw inside. They didn’t do anything wrong but they couldn’t relate to how I felt. That was and still can be lonely.

This loneliness can make you feel invisible. That is how I felt the day after my birthday. I went to church, I worshiped, and I listened to the sermon. At the end of service I exchanged customary pleasantries. But I felt so detached. I smiled as people offered birthday wishes. All I could think about was the absence of my mom’s handwritten cards and thoughtful gifts. I pictured her long fingers and soft brown skin and how those same fingers were left emaciated during her last days alive. I was not at church. I was in Philadelphia in my mom’s bedroom and then by her hospital bed at Temple University Hospital, fighting to be present.

At the end of service someone tapped me on the shoulder, embraced me and whispered in my ear, “I know it must be hard, you don’t have to be strong, she is looking down on you and is so proud.” I wept on her shoulder because she saw me. Someone realized what I was carrying and I no longer felt the pressure to be “okay.” Someone honored my mom by acknowledging that I must be thinking about her. That acknowledgement shattered my invisibility. It shattered my loneliness.

2. Lost identity is sometimes a part of the process.

I’ve heard that you feel like you lose a piece of yourself when you go through a break up. The same is true when someone you’re close to dies. When you are close to someone, you share daily rhythms and routines with them. This may be morning phone calls, kisses on the cheek, hugs, texts or emails. The sudden absence of a person can leave all of these lost moments feeling hollow. It can be a daily reminder that you lost a part of your life, a part of yourself.



3. Your hopes for your loved one are deferred. 

You never know how much another person is a part of who you are until you lose them. That is very true of my mom. I loved my mom so much that I felt very responsible for her happiness. I saw how she loved and sacrificed for me. I wanted to repay her. I wanted to give her her happy ending. My biggest dream was for her to move to Atlanta where she would have a better quality of life and be near people who truly loved her. She was actually set to move three months before she passed. With a broken heart, I realized that I could never provide her with the material stability that I worked so hard for. Losing her eroded a huge part of what I thought my purpose in life was. Proverbs 13:12, says that a “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. “

4. The grieving process is best addressed by letting it run its course. 

A step in the process of grieving is shock. During this step all of your feelings are suppressed and you exist on autopilot. You are numb to the pain and do what needs to get done. This was very much the case for the weeks following my mom’s death. I planned her funeral, hosted family and began looking for new jobs. The gravity of what I’d witnessed didn’t hit me until a month after her funeral. The sadness would drown me during a car ride, while watching a movie or just seconds after laughter. Grief does not discriminate about where or when you feel it. I’ve learned not to fear those moments and that by being present and okay with “just being” is healing.

5. Losing someone is traumatic.

This is the toughest part to write because mainly I relate to the trauma in images. Even as I write this sentence my chest tightens and a knot rises in my throat. I see my mom losing weight. I see my mom crying out asking why God has punished her. I see the pain in her eyes until I see only their absence while her chest heaves up and down, powered only by the defibrillator. I remember looking at the side of her face, the rise of her cheekbones and the pattern of her moles I’ve spent my whole life memorizing. She was so beautiful and this was never a place, never a circumstance, that I would imagine looking at her. She was my queen, my world and my motivation. And there I was half praying that her heart stopped on its own because I knew she never wanted to be on a breathing machine and I didn’t have the heart to grant her wish. This is trauma.

Many times there is a disappointment that is so crushing that I liken it to trauma. For instance, I fasted, I prayed but most importantly I had faith that God is a healer. Even after my mother’s heart stopped beating, I told God that he could raise her like Lazarus. The seconds after that prayer were deafening. I realized he could, but didn’t. I was disappointed in God. I was also disappointed in myself. Did I fast long enough? Were my prayers strong enough? Was my faith pure enough?

6. It is never too late and you are never too distant to check in on people.

Grieving is a process that never ends. I recently watched the 2010 movie Rabbit Hole and heard the best explanation of this lifelong process. When asked how grief changes, one of the character responds:

“I don't know... the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and... carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you... you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and - there it is. Oh right, that. Which could be awful - not all the time. It's kind of...[deep breath] not that you'd like it exactly, but it's what you've got instead of your [your loved one]. So, you carry it around. And uh... it doesn't go away. Which is... fine, actually.”


I know why it’s fine. It’s fine because my mom meant too much to me to not acknowledge the imprint her life left on my own. And if I can’t be reminded of that imprint by her physical presence then I’ll proudly carry a brick around in my pocket.

Even if grieving wasn’t a long process sometimes the experience of losing a loved one is extended, especially if you are a caregiver. You may have to settle matters of their estate, request autopsies and handle other various legal matters. These are very blatant triggers that are associated with a loved one’s death that can last months or even years after they have passed away.

A Note to Those Who Carry Bricks in Their Pockets

You are amazing. Even in your weakest moments, you are amazing. Your courage to face each day is inspiring. You’re not crazy. You don’t need permission to feel the way you do. You don’t need to shield anyone from your lows or strive to make others feel comfortable. Take the time and space that your heart requires to heal. This process may take away your joy and make you resentful but I pray that those changes are only temporary. I pray that with each day that passes you can take all that you’ve lost and gain something beautiful. It’s okay to not be strong… you are amazing anyway.

Photo: Shutterstock

by Neena Robertson

It was summer. The early morning hours of July 4th, 2013 to be exact.

As I sat in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, trying to rock the pain away, I remember thinking how ironic it was to be having a miscarriage on the day our nation celebrates its liberation. The thing inside of me had become somewhat of an oppressor, forever connecting me to a relationship that I wasn't totally invested in, and a concept of motherhood that I wasn't totally sold on. It would have been a lifetime of responsibility that I wasn't totally prepared for, so some part of me was ready to be free and done with it.

Just hours before the pain began, I was out having dinner with friends who had flown in from Toronto. We were reminiscing about previous travel adventures across the continents and making plans for our next carefree expedition. I felt my stomach begin to cramp. After all of the research I had done online, I knew cramping was the first sign of a miscarriage, so to some degree I was prepared. My doctor had told me two weeks prior that the six-week-old life once growing inside of me had simply stopped. No more heartbeat. No reason she could point to. Just another reminder that death was also a part of life.
I remember reading a blog post in which a woman accurately described a miscarriage as feeling like a walking casket. I could totally relate. Some part of me welcomed the pain. I welcomed the idea of no longer being attached to this thing that I had objectified as part of some twisted biological mechanism.

But the reality is that I hadn’t always viewed giving birth in such a way. In fact, for as long as I can remember, I'd always wanted children. Like most 70’s babies born towards the end of that decade, watching The Cosby Show shaped my ideas of family. Although my own family was fairly intact, it was the relationships between Heathcliff, Claire, and their children that I aspired to achieve once I became an adult. I envisioned living in a beautiful home with a thriving career, a handsome husband, and five loving children whom I was proud and honored to be the mother of.

But as I write this, that image is in complete contrast to my current reality: I am a 36-year-old woman, single and childless by choice and circumstance.

Like many women in my situation, I am constantly being asked when I’m going to have children, get married, and settle down. The younger me used to take offense to family, friends, and complete strangers placing such judgments on my life. It was as if my life were in some way flawed or incomplete because I didn’t have a husband or kids. But my older, more mature self has accepted that it's often difficult to shake socially constructed views.

The truth is: Had it not been for losing my soul mate, I too would probably still be fantasizing about raising a family in a Brooklyn brownstone.

I was 26 years old when Russell passed, and with him went my sense of self and desire to have a family. For so long, it was he and I, traveling across the globe, enjoying each other’s energy, and making plans for the future—which most definitely included children. But not until we were both financially and mentally ready. And at that time, we were neither. Any money that we saved was spent on travel, including a fateful trip to St. Martins that would change our trajectory completely.

It was a Saturday, warm and sunny, with very few clouds in the sky. We had spent the morning preparing for our flight home—me packing, Russell resting. He had passed out from the heat the day before, and the doctor suggested that he take it easy.



I can remember us laughing and reflecting on our time away from home. Seven awesome days of vacation; just the two of us and a rental car. We were all over that little island, visiting the French side, the Dutch side, and then back around. Even on our last day, we made one last loop before traveling to the airport, attempting to take it all in before our return to the states. But halfway around the island, Russell began to feel sick again. He complained of nausea and was sweating profusely. I stopped to grab him a Gatorade and crackers, as the doctor from the day before instructed to do to keep him hydrated. I remember asking him if he wanted to go back to the hospital and him insisting that he just wanted to get home.

But that never happened. He collapsed shortly after we boarded the plane. And although the ambulance ride from the airport to the hospital was fairly quick—island traffic jams aside—he never regained consciousness: A massive heart attack at 31 years old. Dead.

I was calm… too calm. Maybe the experience of him passing out the day before had in some way prepared me for his mortality. Yet I'm guessing it was complete shock that explained my state of stillness. Someone I loved—who was so young and so full of life—was gone.

After the doctor left the room I was on my own, tasked with making sense of something so senseless. I picked up the phone, called my mother and then his sister, and waited for someone to come rescue me.

I had no concept of time. I just knew it was late, but I was wide awake. The sun had set hours ago, turning day to night, warm to cold. After speaking with a few of my family and friends, I convinced my mother that I could manage my flight in the morning on my own. There was no need for her come to me in St. Martin.

I got off the phone and let the reality of my situation sink in: I was alone. Completely and utterly alone. Miles upon miles of ocean separated me from any sense of normalcy.

I remember turning on the television in an attempt to drown out my thoughts. I laid in bed watching the sun peek behind the water with my favorite episode of The Cosby Show playing in the background. Rudy was belting out “Baby!” Her hips were gyrating, her smile as wide as could be, performing in the living room for her grandparents’ anniversary.

It was a small dose of familiarity.

But in the coming weeks, months, and years, my life would be anything but familiar. I would spend a lot of time and energy shaping a new reality, a new sense a self. In an effort to become more self-evolved, I became more self-centered in a way that made sense for my new situation. There was no one that I needed to consider; there was just me. So, I lived my life accordingly—in a way that didn’t hold a space for someone else. Especially a child.

The more trips I began to take by myself or with my girlfriends, the freer I felt. I embraced that feeling. I embraced being single because it meant I wasn’t responsible for meeting someone else’s needs. I still missed Russell and the relationship that we shared ( it’s ten years later and he still occupies a major space in my heart), but I finally felt OK with being by myself.

And it’s not that I despise children. On the contrary, I take pride in being a godmother, honorary godfather, and “fairy god-cousin,” but I'm OK with being childless. As much as I embraced the pain of my miscarriage I felt a few summers ago, I was also completely devastated when the ibuprofen wore off and the reality of my empty womb sunk in. However, in the process of healing, I accepted how loss can give birth to life.

I feel like a woman renewed and redefined. I don’t feel pressured to get married and have babies, or live my life in any one particular way. There's something very powerful in that for me; something very liberating and spirit filling at the same time.
It’s not to say that I will never love again or have children. But if and when I do, it will be on my own terms and according to my own rules. It will not simply be because that is what my mother did, and my mother’s mother before her, and so on. And it most certainly will not be because it’s what women are “supposed” to do. I have vowed to live my life in a way that makes me happy, and I’m not willing to compromise that for the sake of someone else. I understand compromise is the very core of being a good mother or spouse. They both require offering oneself completely to other beings. That is beautiful, but most certainly not for me—not at this time.

People often say that once you have children and get married that these feelings will change. Well, what if I don’t want to change? I want to continue living and being just as I am. I love the freedom of just being able to get up and go—no plans or approval needed. Indeed, I felt free just typing that! I would hate to end up being someone who had children or got married just for the sake of doing both, rather than truly wanting those things for myself. Why set myself up for that type of resentment… or anyone else, for that matter? Instead I choose to do what makes me feel good, however selfish that may sound.

Loss has forced me to live a more authentic life and I am forever grateful for that type of rebirthing. While we may never really know what the world is going to throw our way—or how to even begin to preparing for it—our work is simply to adjust, trusting that the universe will guide our way.

 Photo: Shutterstock 

Neena Robertson is a native Washingtonian and practicing psychotherapist. She specializes in depression and anxiety, helping her clients manage grief and loss. Neena also recently launched a clothing line (www.mypsatees.com) where she enjoys flexing her creative muscle by way of statement tees. She's also in the process of finalizing a mental health app, Sister Sessions, for women of color to help minimize the stigma of mental health. (Be on the look out!)

Kelly Mayhew died at the age of 34 after receiving silicone butt injections from an unlicensed practitioner.

by Kadon Douglas

An 11-year-old girl charged in the beating of a 2-month-old staying overnight with her expressed no remorse about the infant's death, police said.

The 11-year-old, her mother and the baby, Zuri Whitehead, were on a couch downstairs when the mother fell asleep at about 3 a.m. ET Friday, Wickliffe police Chief Randy Ice said at a news conference Monday.

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A Maryland woman who was shot Saturday morning by the man who shot and killed two New York Police Department Officers Saturday afternoon has been identified, officials said.

by Michelle Y. Talbert

Last weekend, we learned that Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy, was killed by Cleveland police while holding a toy gun—in a state that ironically has an “open carry” weapons law. It is impossible that this is our reality: 12-year-old Black boys die playing with toys, but grown white men who shoot up movie theaters get taken alive. What is even more disheartening is the way many people use black-on-black crime as a way of justifying this violence and the disregard for black lives.

by Brandon Blackwell

A 37-year-old bipolar and schizophrenic woman died after police slammed her to the pavement outside her family's home, her brother said.

Tanesha Anderson was pronounced dead at Cleveland Clinic early Thursday after an altercation with officers nearly two hours earlier outside her home on the 1300 block of Ansel Road.

by Kate Abbey-Lambertz

by Danielle Whitelow

It seems that lately I learn of breaking news via social media. May 28th, 2014 was no exception . After completing my morning workout I grabbed a banana, plopped onto my bed and started scrolling through Facebook on my iPhone. I immediately see that Maya Angelou's death is trending. I Google to verify that the news is true and sigh when I realize it is. More than twenty years have passed since my middle school Language Arts teacher, Ms. Eickelberg, introduced me to Angelou's work. A passionate and thorough teacher Ms. Eick had many of the greats of the African-American literary canon within her personal library. She stored her books at the back of her classroom, immaculately organized, each one stamped with a notary denoting her ownership.

Alice Coachman, the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, died at age 90 in Albany, Ga., on Monday morning.

Coachman, the 1948 Olympic high jump champion, suffered a stroke in April and died at an Albany hospital, according to Albany’s NBC affiliate.

Ruby Dee has died at age 91. The actress starred in plays and over 50 films during a career that spanned nearly 70 years.

Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, she was a civil rights activist who was awarded the National Civil Rights Museum's Lifetime Achievement Freedom award in 2005 alongside her husband of 56 years, Ossie Davis.

North Carolina outlets confirmed today that Dr. Maya Angelou, Award-winning author, renowned poet and civil rights activist, has died. She was 86.

Mayor Allen Joines of Winston-Salem, North Carolina confirmed Angelou was found by her caretaker this morning.

My brother, Tommy died on October 22, 2009. He lived 38 years, 4 months, 22 days and 3 ½ hours. I was born when he was 10 years old. Here is what I learned from the 28 years I witnessed his life.

Oscar-nominated actress Juanita Moore passed away Wednesday at the age of 99.

Moore is best known for her role as Annie Johnson, the mother of a daughter who passes for white, in the 1959 film Imitation of Life. For this role, Moore, became the fifth Black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award.

Born in Los Angeles, Moore helped to break down doors for black actors in the Los Angeles area. She was a member of the Cambridge Players along with celebrated actresses like Esther Rolle ("Good Times") and Helen Martin ("227").

by Ellen Usher

The smell of urine, thinly masked by ammonia and bleach, assaulted me every time I entered the building. I hated going, but I had to. I didn’t want to see him, or rather the shell he had become. I had done it before in 1995 when I would lose the person closest to me. Before, I had time to prepare. An infection, a bruised leg, gangrene, lost of a limb, and a slow decline into senility had taken ten years, and by the end I was prepared. I had time and months away at college to cushion the blow of my grandmother’s death.

For a year and a half I watched my mom dying without realizing it. I was 10 years old when my mom passed. I wonder if Paris Jackson too watched her father dying for years without realizing it. She was 11 years old when Michael Jackson passed.