Healing | (My Last?) Health Update #10
The debate about "grieving adulthood" and an update on my new project
Welcome to Gen Z Translator. If you’re new, you can subscribe here and follow me on Threads, Instagram, or X. Views and experiences my own.
In November, this Tweet was going around talking about grieving adulthood.
It got a lot of attention and, of course, had it’s supporters and its dissenters. One person said “the continued and privileged use of ‘grief’ for things that don’t involve actual death feels like one of the worse semantic losses of the last decade.”
Whew. I will respectfully disagree on that, and my therapist would, too. I think mourning can be reserved for the deceased, but in life, there is so much grief. Robbing someone of their ability to experience that isn’t productive for anyone.
Grief can come in waves for anything – death, an emotional loss, the loss of mobility, the loss of life as you know it, etcetera. To deny our grief is to deny our healing. (That’s coming from someone in the process of healing).
Sometimes, most of the time, things don’t work out the way we planned. Let’s not gatekeep grief.
On a different note, I’ve realized that my cancer journey doesn’t quite intersect with the focus of this newsletter anymore. I began writing Gen Z Translator consistently while I was in cancer treatment. On top of covering pop culture, I wanted a more personal way to share my treatment journey than social media. These two niches are diverging, though, as Substack takes on more concrete audience segments.
That’s why I’m announcing I will be starting a newsletter in 2025 called cancer, by cancer patients, that focuses exclusively on mine and other’s cancer journeys. The goal is to have one guest essay a month so other cancer patients and survivors can tell their stories, too, and you can share in their experiences.
If you’re subscribed to Gen Z Translator, you will receive an invitation to subscribe to cancer, by cancer patients. You can always unsubscribe, though I think that will be your loss.
The last thing I’ll mention is that you can read the newsletter for free, but there will be a paid option. The idea behind this is that you will be able to support real cancer survivors who have taken on the financial burden of life-threatening illnesses. I would appreciate if you considered a premium subscription in the New Year.
There will be more about this newsletter in 2025, but for now, subscribe to get updates when they come. Thanks!
And in the meantime, grieve, heal, and breathe – you got this.
