FYI: update on how Taren is doing, from Taren

[Ben Wikler]

New blog post from Taren. 

– Ben

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THE GRIEVING PROCESS: HOW I AM AND HOW YOU CAN HELP

I get asked a lot how I’m doing. The truth is, it’s up and down, so whatever I say here, please recognize that it could have changed by the time I see you. That having been said, the truth is also that these days I find having the “how are you doing?” conversation tiring and emotionally draining — and so I’m writing this in the hopes that I can have it less frequently and with less intensity.

That is very, very much not to say that I don’t appreciate your concern about me. I absolutely do. And I want to be crystal-clear that I’m not thinking of anyone in particular who’s checked in on me (including you, mom and dad!). It’s the natural thing to do, and for many people at many stages of grief would be the right thing to do. The fact that right now, for me, it is not is precisely why I am writing this blog post — to help you help me. This is a bit of a grand experiment: I have no idea whether it will work.

So, the explicit asks here are twofold:

1. Please share this blog post with people who want to know how I’m doing, so that they know without having to ask.
2. Don’t bring up Aaron’s death or my own emotional state in conversation unless/until I do. See the last section below for more detailed DO’s and DON’T’s.

So: Here’s how I’m doing.

On the plus side:

• I had a really good few weeks a few weeks ago — I think I went more than 2 weeks straight without crying. It might be a coincidence, but it’s noteworthy that for those few weeks, I was in San Francisco — a place that I had never visited with Aaron and therefore holds almost no associations with him for me, even though he lived there and a lot of his good friends still do. I was also exercising a lot, not traveling, and in a really good daily routine.
• I’ve now been back at work for more than two months, and that’s been great. I love my job and the SumOfUs.org team (after all, I did create them both myself!). Aaron was a huge part of my world while I was getting SumOfUs off the ground, and during the toughest parts was my biggest emotional support and my most treasured advisor. But even so, it well predates our relationship, and I’ve been almost surprised by how relatively easy it’s been to separate my work from the hole his death left in my life.

On the minus side:

• The last few weeks have been rougher. I don’t really know why, but it might have to do with being back on the East Coast where memories of Aaron lurk around every corner. Or it could be that I’m traveling much more and not in a routine, so I’m not sleeping as much/as well and am therefore just more tired and emotionally vulnerable. Or who knows.
• I still have occasional nightmares (I woke up to one on Saturday).
• Reading about Aaron, doing interviews about him, and even engaging with advocacy efforts around Aaron’s death — such as the impressive work that great folks like Demand Progress have been doing on the CFAA, prosecutorial overreach, and MIT’s involvement in the case — all feel very hard these days. When I do them, I generally feel kind of crappy for the rest of the day. I’ve therefore been doing and will continue to do as little as possible of the sort, though it’s not entirely avoidable.

This isn’t really plus or minus, but it’s a relevant fact:

• One of the more common manifestations of grief for me at this point seems to be a fairly sudden descent into uncontrollable sobbing, usually triggered by some kind of experience of Aaron-not-being-in-the-world. The weird thing about it is that I often don’t feel any emotional mediation between the trigger and the crying. There’s an intellectual “Aaron’s not here” and then there’s sobbing, and only after I’ve been crying for a while do I actually feel sad or angry or something. 

What this means for you

The tricky thing about all this from the perspective of my friends is that grief — whether the aforementioned very visible sudden sobbing, or just me feeling sad inside — seems often to be triggered by extremely well-intentioned comments/questions. A mention of Aaron’s death being in the news again. A query about how I’m doing. An expression of gratitude for the speeches I gave at Aaron’s memorial services. Etc. That’s because unlike in the initial aftermath of Aaron’s death, I’m not always thinking about Aaron’s death — I am often actually in the flow of regular life and work and play. And if that’s where I am, anything that makes me really focus on his death or its aftermath jar me out of the flow into a much less fun state.

Again, I want to be totally clear: I’m not in the slightest bit upset with anyone who’s done this. I really, really, appreciate all the concern and support, and all of it has been with the absolute best of intentions. And there’s no way to make this perfect — I’m still going to get sad sometimes, and that’s ok.

I also want to be clear that I’m putting time and emotional energy into dealing with all of this. I’ll be seeing a therapist in Boston, where I just moved for the summer. And I have no problem at all processing how I’m feeling with friends when that’s what I need to do (huge thanks to the many wonderfully supportive friends and family who are there when I need you, at all hours of the day and night — again, including you, mom and dad!). But I shouldn’t, and can’t, be in processing mode all the time. If you think about it, most people aren’t constantly processing 5 months after a loved one’s death. But I think partly because I travel so much, and partly because of the sheer number of people who were touched by Aaron’s death, it’s common for me to see multiple people every day who haven’t gotten to spend much time with me since he died, or haven’t seen me in a month, or for that matter have never met me before. That seems to result in a set of difficult conversations that tend to happen over and over. And those are the conversations I’d like to have fewer of.

Finally, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t mention Aaron to me at all.  ”Regular” stories about him — like “Oh, remember the time when Aaron…” or “Aaron once told me…” — are great. They’re the kind of conversation you might have about a treasured friend who moved to France and fell out of touch. I tell them a lot myself and they don’t psychologically jar me in the same way. 

 

The Experiment

This is all particularly relevant right now this week because I’ll be speaking at Personal Democracy Forum in New York (I’m giving the opening talk, entitled “You Know Nothing, Campaigners”, at 9am Thursday). The conference is loosely Aaron-themed, and I’ll be the opening speaker and then will also be on a panel about him later in the day on Thursday. I expect many people there will have some connection to Aaron (and I hope many people will like my speech!), and many of them will be uncertain about whether and how to approach me. So here’s what I’m going to propose as an experiment starting this week:

DO:

• Have fun with me. Karaoke, puns, laser tag, pizza, hikes, complaining about your dating life… All are great. (Did I mention karaoke?)
• Engage with me about ideas (e.g., this week, the ideas in my PDF speech!).
• Talk to me about SumOfUs.org and my work.
• Mention or tell stories about Aaron, especially when it’s relevant in the conversation — like if he once told you something that contradicts something I said he believed (he was a man of contradictions, so this happens!), or if he refused to eat at the restaurant we just walked past because he didn’t like the menu font.
• Sit and talk/listen to me and give me a hug if I am already feeling blue. 

DON’T (at least, out of the blue):

• Tell me you don’t know how I’ve done it/you’ve been impressed with how I’ve handled his death (this forces me to think about how hard it’s been).
• Express condolences for everything I’ve been through (this reminds me of everything I’ve been through).
• Ask me how I’m really doing. No need to avoid the normal conversational “hey, how’s it going?” — that’s fine. I’m talking about the “but really, how are you?” kinds of conversations — they make me start a kind of reflexive but deep emotional survey of myself, which is draining and not fun.
• Ask me to approve or engage with some way in which you want to honor Aaron (e.g., naming a new open access initiative after him). In general, whatever you’re doing is probably great — I’m of the Thousand Flowers Blooming school of thought and don’t feel a need to control everything that happens in his memory. If you really feel the need to run it past someone, I suggest contacting Aaron’s friend and executor Alec Resnick (@aresnick on Twitter).

And again, please share this blog post widely. The experiment will only work if lots of people read this!

Thanks,

Taren