By the time this lands in your inbox, I will be wearing glitter in my hair and singing myself hoarse as I watch Taylor Swift from the upper section of Gillette Stadium. I know, I know—half of you will hate me for this, and the other half would rather be anywhere else but inside that stadium. Originally, I wasn’t supposed to be there either. Like most of the country, I missed out on the pre-sale, after which I had a little pouting session and some choice words for Ticketmaster, and then moved on with my life. No sense crying over missed concert tickets. Then two weeks ago, I got a call from my husband’s youngest brother who wanted to know if I was interested in taking his friend’s ticket who could no longer attend.
I said yes before he’d finished his sentence.
I am about to turn 36 and have been a mother for nearly ten years. Everyone in the group I’ll be attending the show with is 23 or younger. I babysat his brother at age two when I first came into the family twenty years ago; I visited his sister, who is also attending, at the hospital on the day she was born. To say I’ll be the odd man out is an understatement. Was that going to stop me from going? Not a freakin chance. When I told my husband that they were planning to get there early to tailgate, he said, “So, are you gonna, like, bring a book with you?” I laughed out loud and then considered. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.” Yesterday morning, his brother called to ask if I wanted to get to the house where they’re staying early. “We’re all gonna get dressed here before the show and the girls have some glitter they’re going to put in their hair if you want some too.”
“Count me in,” I said. When in Rome.
It’s been a grief-filled week in our house. Or more accurately, a grief-filled couple months. We’re navigating some big things as a family that I’m not ready to write about yet, and the past several days have felt complicated and heavy for all of us. It’s not just me though—lately it seems like nearly everyone in my circle is wading through something complex and emotionally draining, like the weight of the world is just a little too heavy for the number of people available to shoulder it. Not that this should come as a surprise to me. The world right now feels like a raging dumpster fire of unprocessed trauma, predatory social media algorithms, and people using the word “sus.” There are so many terrifying things that take up space in my brain at 4 AM—global warming, robots taking over the world, everyone I love getting cancer, the fashion industry bringing back parachute pants—and sometimes the whole thing feels too damn overwhelming. All that fear, all those unknowns. No wonder so many of us seem to be struggling.
I have always been bad at navigating grief. When I was younger, I threw myself head-first into my sadness, mourning people and situations for far longer than was healthy. (My first real boyfriend and I dated cumulatively for like two months in eighth grade and then I mourned our breakup for the next two years. Cue the Nickelback playlist.) Once I discovered numbing though, I went the total opposite direction, drowning out any hint of discomfort with an arsenal of vices. And now I’m in this weird no-man’s land where I no longer want to numb out and I can’t pause my life for two years to grieve every little uncomfortable thing that happens to me. So that leaves me here, desperately trying to blend my grief into the rest of my life like a hack painter with shitty brushes.
Because this is what I am learning about grief: it is not separate from everything else in life. It is life. It shouldn’t be numbed or quarantined, kept sacred and separate from the other experiences of being human. It’s all part of it. Today I am feeling sad and weird and heavy, but I am also going to sing with 23 year olds and clink my tailgate seltzers against their cans of beers and wear some goddamn glitter in my hair. In this life, grief and joy do not have to be mutually exclusive.
I hope if you’re grieving something right now, you’re able to find some room at the table for joy too. Let yourself laugh. Connect with people who remind you of what’s good in life. Put some flowers on your table. Go outside and lay in the sunshine. Cook yourself a comforting meal. Wear the glitter in your hair. Grief will always exist in some measure, but that doesn’t mean joy has to evacuate the premises every time it comes around. Invite them both in. Sit them down at the table across from each other. Start a dialogue. There is so much they have to learn from each other.
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