Living With Grief in a System That Wasn’t Built for Us

Tammy Isaac DMin
Jul 23
2 min read

There’s a kind of grief that doesn’t follow a funeral. It doesn’t come with casseroles, flowers, or sympathy cards. It shows up in headlines. In legislation. In silence after another injustice. It lingers in our breath and our bones. And too often, it goes unnamed. This is political grief.

Political grief is the sorrow we carry when systems meant to protect us fail again. It’s the ache that rises when your vote feels like a whisper, when your community is consistently overlooked, and when your rights are treated as optional. For many, this grief feels new. For others especially Black and Brown Americans it’s generational. We’ve always known what it means to feel unheard, unprotected, and unseen by the powers that be. At the International Death, Grief, and Bereavement Conference, I was introduced to the term “political grief” in an academic setting. But long before it was named, we were living it.

This Grief Lives in Our Bodies

Political grief doesn’t stay in the news it settles in the nervous system. Tight shoulders. Shallow breath. Chronic fatigue. Restlessness. You’re not just tired you’re grieving. And if we don’t make space for this grief, it begins to live in us. Not just emotionally, but physically. We don’t just pass down strength. We pass down sorrow. And we must learn to make space for both.

Our Strength Has Been Forged in Sorrow

For me, grief often speaks through creativity. I write my best when I’ve allowed my emotions to breathe not in chaos, but after I’ve sat with the sadness and asked it what it needs to say. I don’t write to escape my feelings. I write around them shaping language from lived experience. And this, too, is protest. Because grief and protest are intertwined. Grief is often the catalyst for protest the spark that says, “Never again.” And protest is often the expression of grief a way to mourn publicly, demand justice, and cry out as a community.

So, What Do We Do with This Grief?

We gather. Because trauma heals in healthy relationships. Community reminds us we are not alone, not crazy, not weak just weary. And healing happens when we allow ourselves to be witnessed in our grief. We speak up. Not just in marches, but in poetry, policy, and parenting. In truth-telling. In choosing joy as a form of resistance. And we rest. As Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry says, rest is reparations. It is a portal to healing. A sacred refusal to let systems steal our bodies and our peace.

Let This Be That Space

A space to say: “I’m tired not just from what happened today, but from what’s been happening for generations.” A space where ancestral grief can rise and be met with compassion, not condemnation. A space where we breathe not because the world gives us peace, but because we are reclaiming it anyway. You are not alone in this grief. And you don’t have to carry it in silence.

Breathe. Speak. Gather. Rest.