Chris Duffy

It is both you doing it and it doing you.

And it is active and passive and both.

That messiness of grief, I think, is what a lot of people really struggle with.

And that struggle with not being able to articulate.

I want to read two quotes from the book that are from really different parts.

This first one is from towards the end.

This is why I think I cannot stomach the grief platitudes industry.

Grief is not joyful or peaceful.

It is a war inside me.

It is an alien chewing its way out.

It is a tornado somewhere beneath my lungs.

It is breaking me and somehow people can't see.

I want them to see and I'm terrified they will see.

And I am both of these things at the same time being pulled in opposite directions like there's a team of horses attached to each end.

Except somehow, unbelievably, I am stronger than the teams of horses and I do not get torn apart.

That is such a unbelievably accurate description of grief to me and yet so incredibly specific.

And that's the personal side of grief.

And then I just want to pair it with something you wrote at the beginning of the book, which is you say.

I've covered social movements for the better part of two decades.

And one thing that the ones that stuck had in common was that they provided solidarity in a material way.