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Let Anger Turn to Grief, Not Revenge
By Catherine Sheehy

October, 2001
volume 38, number 8

I have not been getting much sleep in the past week, choosing instead to watch news programs into the wee hours of the night. I am simultaneously riveted, yet repelled by the constant replay of the twin World Trade Center towers crashing to the ground and disturbed by the sloganeering that certain television and radio stations bring to their reporting. But I continue watching because of the stories. Stories from eye witnesses, from those who managed to escape, from those whose loved ones did not. Stories of courage on the part of survivors who helped others get out alive. Stories of the heroic efforts on the part of the emergency service personnel who are sifting the rubble for signs of life and remains.

We have all witnessed the vignettes of sorrow, anger, fear, confusion, loss, and gratitude for other's heroism. These people recount their own stories far more eloquently than I can so I will not retell them here.

What strikes me when I hear or read these reports, however, is that while mourning is deeply personal, it is also universal. Some of us feel the compulsion to communion with others, the need to ventilate emotions. Others of us feel comfortable with quieter modes of expression. In cultures around the globe, people have created rituals around grief and mourning codified in clothing, rites of specific lengths of time, or restriction from certain activities during mourning periods. At base, however, grief is one of those experiences that most people will encounter at some time in their lives. It is precisely the universality of mourning that lends it its transformative power.

When loss is collective, grief requires public support. People need space to grieve, and often create physical sites to recognize collective grief. The large message boards across from Unity Park in Adams Morgan on which people have penned their thoughts and feelings about the tragedy on September 11 are just one of the many ad hoc grieving spaces springing up across DC.

Many factors can interrupt or prolong the grieving process, however. Grief may become disrupted, prolonged, or dysfunctional. Disenfranchised grief refers to the grief experienced when loss is not acknowledged openly, publicly mourned, or socially supported. On an individual level, the consequence of this can be an unconscious reaction that surfaces through emotions, behavior and attitudes that can result in personal and relational health problems.*

When collective grief is disenfranchised, society's emotions and behaviors can manifest in ways that tear at the social fabric. This country felt loss during the Vietnam War-a loss in the traditional sense of defeat and the damage wrought on U.S. machismo that had been unchallenged until that event. It was also a loss in the sense of "innocence" destroyed. James Gibson wrote that US society was in crisis after Vietnam: "Assumptions about what was right and how the world operated became problematic-and domestic challenges to the natural order of things had already been raised by the civil rights, anti-war and feminist movements."** The United States felt its loss acutely, but it did not allow itself to mourn. In many respects the veterans of that war bore the brunt of the nation's suppressed grief.

Some of what I have heard from this countryâs elected and other government officials in reaction to the attacks in New York and DC in September hearken to the nationâs reaction to the Vietnam War. The country thought itself immune to the kind of mass and random violence that others around the globe experience daily. "End of Innocence" was the title of an article on Newsweek's website on September 11. Meanwhile, the President has promised to "hunt down" these "barbarians," restoring, in a sense, the order that had existed before Vietnam in which America was undefeatable. It is language that is dangerous both because of the terror it instills in people in Afghanistan, but also because it has the potential to stymie our grieving process.

It is language that could prevent the country from moving on from its justified and comprehensible anger, anger that could mutate into hatred, bigotry and racism. The fact that this danger is real is evidenced in the death threats and violence lodged against Arab Americans, Muslims and others who may be perceived as such since Bushâs declaration of war on those who committed these crimes.

But we need not allow this to happen.

We have lost much in this recent attack. The sheer enormity of this tragedy is mind-boggling. Rather than retaliating in anger, we can allow our grief to transform us. Our grief can bring us to greater compassion and empathy for the untold grief, loss, confusion and fear that people around the world experience when their loved ones, friends, peers are touched by tragedy. This is already happening as thousands take to the streets in vigils, expressing their sorrow and calling on leadership to respond thoughtfully, to avoid the impulse to seek revenge. And if there is any larger meaning in this tragedy, this must be it.

___________________

* K. Doka Ed., Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books. 1989.

** from American Paramilitary Culture and the Reconstitution of the Vietnam War published in Making War/Making Peace: The Social Foundations of Violent Conflict.

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