Have you ever felt pain and you weren’t able to express how bad it really was?
Not so much the inability to transcribe the emotion into words; but the lack of liberty to truly say how difficult the path is that you are walking down.
It’s more like not being able to show the people around you something incredibly significant because you know, deep down, it’s something you should not do. Not because of you, but because of how your tribe will react and the limits of how they will be able to handle the bombshell that ticks beneath the surface.
If this is a kind of secret that you’ve carried before… you might know what it’s like.
Therapist mumbo-jumbo has a term for it: disenfranchised grief. Batman carries this cross beautifully. The knight of Gotham City fighting evil when no one is looking, making sacrifices that go unnoticed and doing it on his own for the betterment of the people around him who have no clue of what he’s up to. Sure, he's got Boy Wonder but in the DC comic books, Batman is partly responsible for Robin’s death via the work of The Joker. Bruce Wayne isn’t allowed to be Batman publicly because there is no proper space for him to do so and by doing so he would only make matters worse for the people around him...
Well, you may be saying that he does have Alfred… and I suppose everybody needs an Alfred…
But still, the Batman story outlines quite well what it means to hold onto a grief that you just can’t be completely open about because life just isn’t always as simple as it seems.
If I’m losing you and you are not making the connection, here are some more relatable images of disenfranchised grief...
- When an affair takes place, who is there to comfort the person who strayed?
- A car accident happens that takes the life of a well-loved actor—who stands by the person who hit them?
- The difficult transition for a mother whose daughter has had the courage to come out as transgender and she has no time to grieve the loss of the little girl she thought she raised without alienating her incredible child.
- When somebody renounces their upbringing or faith because of how toxic it is, knowing they will now walk alone without the support of their family or congregation.
- When a woman chooses (or doesn’t choose) to have an abortion.
These are just a few of the many ways that grief becomes disenfranchised. It’s a complicated process and that can be difficult and lonely.
But we don’t always have to be completely alone.
Batman did... by the way... have Alfred…
You may not be able to speak to Alfred in public. You may not be able to acknowledge him when you pass him on the street. You might not ever have the freedom to share your story with the world. Justice may will never come and you may never be truly understood.
But you don’t have to be alone.
Find an Alfred. Because Batman could never have done it on his own.
Until next time,
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