Disenfranchised grief

I wrote about complicated grief in two recent posts: Complicated Grief, and Complicated Grief – follow-up. I just learned about a subtle, stealthy variant: disenfranchised grief, grief which can be complicated, although it doesn’t have to be, but that is trivialized by society. “So what,” “Tough luck,” Who cares?” responses. The Importance Of Mourning Losses (Even When They Seem Small), NPR, Kavitha Cardoza and Claire Marie Schneider, June 14, 2021 

Brene Brown touches on the concept as well, when she speaks about accepting an idea that suffering can’t be used in a contest – it’s as fair for a person who’s lost a job to be upset as it is for a person who’s lost a pet to be upset. But it is necessary to be realistic about the stressors: the person who drops a carton of eggs maybe, just maybe, doesn’t have quite the same reason to be upset as the person who loses a refrigerator’s worth of food. Except of course that carton of eggs might have been a last meal. That refrigerator might be one of three. Brown refers to it as “pissing and moaning with perspective.” I need to make it very clear that all the examples I cite are mine, ungainly and I hope amusing, and in mind because I dropped a carton of eggs last week.