The Silent Burden: Understanding Grief Through The Eyes Of Black Women With Natasha Smith
Β Host Dr. Tina Fornwald welcomes author and grief educator Natasha Smith to discuss how loss impacts individuals through a distinct cultural lens. Why is grief experienced differently by Black women, and what do we need to understand that we’ve been missing. Natasha Smith shares her personal story of carrying decades of unspoken loss, including family deaths, pregnancy loss, and silent caregiving. Together, they break down the cultural expectations of being the strong Black woman and explore how faith communities can create safer places for emotional healing. This powerful conversation offers practical guidance for releasing internal pressure and giving yourself full permission to feel seen. I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.Β Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World. — Watch the episode here Β Β Listen to the podcast here Β The Silent Burden: Understanding Grief Through The Eyes Of Black Women With Natasha Smith Welcome to the show. This show features a conversation, practical tools, and inspiring stories to help you understand where grief gets stuck and how to move forward with hope. This conversation is one I believe everyone needs to hear. Grief is universal, but isn’t it always experienced the same way? Culture, race, community, expectations, faith, and life experience all shape how we grieve and whether we feel safe enough to express our grief. Joining me is the author and grief advocate, Natasha Smith, whose work shines a light on the unique grief experience of Black women through her own story, including profound loss, including the death of several loved ones, pregnancy loss, and years of caring for grief silently. She is helping others understand that grief begins when we finally give ourselves permission to be seen. Welcome, Natasha, to the Widowhood. Β Β Β Natasha, welcome to the Widowhood. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. If you would think of like the ticker tape that is in your head, like Welcome to The Widowhood. What would be the thing that really comes to mind when you hear that? That a loss has occurred to hold that highly. Now, a loss has occurred. I love how you phrased that, because you have been experiencing loss, my sister, over decades of different things. What made you finally say, βI cannot do this quietly?β Confronting Unprocessed Loss 2020 happened literally up until that moment. Up to that point, I was holding it all, stuffing it, just trying to outrun and run from grief. Primarily because I didn’t know how to process it and didn’t know what to do with it. 2020, we were shut in our homes with ourselves to deal with ourselves. That was really the pivotal point for me. Really saying I have to do something with this. Every time you turn on the news, death is staring everyone in the face. We were all experiencing loss at that time. It was really so in our faces, like death, loss, dying. There was so much chaos in the world, a political year on top of a lot of racial things that were going on. It was like, I couldn’t hide from grief even though I was running from it. That was my time to confront it. You say all of the things, when you think of your grief, what are all those things that you were trying to run from, the experiences you had? Exactly. The loss of half of my immediate family. The death of my dad and two of my older sisters. My older sister passed away when I was a sophomore in college. It was at a young age, or still in my teenage years. Also in my teenage years, I had a teen pregnancy that I placed the child for adoption. That was a loss that I really never talked about, that I stuffed away and really didn’t process at all. That was a loss that I had started to begin to unravel and process in 2020, along with miscarriages and the death of babies by stillbirth. A lot of loss that they came and they went, and I did not deal with them at all. I wrote this down because I want to make sure I say this correctly. You often say that while grief is universal, Black women experience it differently. What do most people outside of that experience understand versus what it is? That’s a beautiful question because often when I’m asked about Black Woman Grief, it comes from one of two places. One from curiosity and then another place of offense. To answer your question, someone outside of it, it may seem as if our grief is being compared to everyone else’s, and that it demeans or diminishes other people’s experience. However, that’s really not the case. Black Woman Grief is not about anyone else. It’s about us and our experiences. Pause right there. Say that again a little bit slower. Honoring Distinct Grief Experiences For Black Woman Grief, it is about us and not other people’s experiences. It is about what we experience. It’s not about them, but it’s about us. It does not diminish or take away from other people’s experiences. Instead, it makes space for ours. That right there is something people need to sit with. It’s not about comparison. My bad English has got nothing to do with anybody else but the person that’s dealing with it. It would be like having a conversation about people who are amputees. It has nothing to do with a conversation about people who have legs. This is the amputee experience. I cannot say anything that they’re going to say about that because I have both of my legs. I can choose to listen. I can choose to
