By Brian Stefan, LCSW
California Grief Center | The Grief Wave
🌊 TL;DR
Every notification of loss now travels at light speed. A grandmother's death in Mumbai becomes a Facebook memorial seen by hundreds. A wildfire in Canada triggers climate grief in teenagers across six continents. The collapse of a pension fund in Detroit creates mourning rituals that mirror ancient bereavement practices. We've built a world where grief refuses to stay local, and we're still learning what this means for how we heal.
We now know:
Personal loss has become performative, creating new forms of public mourning and digital memorialization
Economic trauma spreads through networks faster than support systems can respond
Environmental grief transcends geography, connecting local losses to planetary mourning
Professional identities dying en masse creates collective mourning for entire ways of being
The same networks that amplify our pain might also amplify our capacity to hold each other
The question isn't whether grief has gone global: it already has. The question is whether we can learn to grieve together without drowning in each other's sorrow.
Facing the Grief Together
On March 15, 2019, a terrorist attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, claimed 51 lives. Within hours, vigils were being organized from London to Los Angeles. Within days, New Zealand's prime minister was wearing a hijab in solidarity, and "They Are Us" became a worldwide rallying cry.
But something else happened in those same hours and days: millions of people who had never set foot in New Zealand began to grieve as if they had lost family members. Muslim communities globally felt the terror as if it had happened in their own neighborhoods. Parents everywhere held their children tighter. The grief was real, immediate, and somehow both deeply personal and utterly shared.
This is the strange alchemy of our hyperconnected age: we have created a world where every tragedy becomes everyone's tragedy, where every loss ripples instantly across continents, where grief itself has become a global phenomenon that crosses every border.
We are all mourning together now, whether we chose to or not.
Part I: The Death of Distance in Sorrow
For most of human history, grief was geographically bounded. You mourned your village's losses, your tribe's dead, perhaps the casualties of wars that touched your region. Distance created a natural buffer: suffering that occurred beyond your horizon remained largely abstract, filtered through stories told by travelers or letters that took months to arrive.
The 20th century began to change this. Radio brought distant wars into living rooms. Television made far-off famines visible in real-time. But even then, there were gatekeepers: editors, producers, network executives who decided which sorrows would cross borders and which would remain local.
The internet obliterated these boundaries entirely.
Now, a factory collapse in Bangladesh becomes a trending topic in Seattle within hours. A school shooting in Brazil triggers lockdown drills in suburban Detroit. A grandmother's death in a small Italian village becomes a viral tribute viewed by millions who never knew her name but somehow share her family's tears.
Digital memorialization has created entirely new categories of grief. We mourn celebrities we never met, communities we've never visited, and futures we never personally owned. Social media algorithms, designed to maximize engagement, have learned that grief and outrage drive clicks, so they amplify human suffering with mechanical efficiency.
Consider the mechanics: Facebook's "legacy contact" feature means that dead profiles become shrines visited by thousands. Instagram accounts become digital graveyards where strangers leave flowers emoji under photos of people they never knew. LinkedIn turns professional obituaries into networking opportunities wrapped in mourning language.
Parasocial grief (mourning for people we knew only through screens) has become as real and consuming as traditional bereavement. When a YouTuber dies, their millions of followers don't just lose entertainment; they lose what felt like a relationship. When a beloved public figure passes, global outpourings of grief can eclipse local tragedies that claim more lives but have fewer followers.
The speed is what makes it different. A tsunami in Japan becomes a source of anxiety in Ohio faster than rescue teams can reach the affected areas. The death of a democratic institution in one country triggers mourning for democracy itself in dozens of others. Grief travels at fiber-optic speed, while healing still moves at human pace.
Part II: Economic Grief and the Mourning of Prosperity
The 2008 financial crisis taught us that economic loss creates grief indistinguishable from bereavement. Families who lost homes spoke of "mourning their dream." Retirees whose pensions evaporated described feeling like they were "grieving their future." Communities where factories closed developed what researchers described as economic trauma responses.
But 2008 was just the beginning of economic grief going global.
Cryptocurrency market volatility now creates waves of economic grief that spread across multiple continents simultaneously. When major digital assets lose value rapidly, online mental health resources report increased usage from users across different regions. The loss isn't just financial: people mourn the death of their identity as "investors," the collapse of their dreams of financial freedom, the disappointment of economic setbacks.
Gig economy changes create new forms of precarious mourning. When major platforms alter their algorithms or policies, thousands of workers globally experience what therapists are learning to recognize as occupational grief. When a social media platform changes its monetization rules, content creators worldwide simultaneously mourn the loss of their livelihood, often in real-time, on the very platforms that are disrupting their economic base.
Generational economic mourning has become a shared global experience. Young people across developed nations are simultaneously grieving the death of economic systems that worked for their parents but no longer function for them. The inability to buy homes, start families, or save for retirement isn't just an individual disappointment but a collective mourning for an entire model of adulthood.
What's striking is how economic grief has adopted the rituals of traditional bereavement. Online forums where people share their financial losses read like obituaries. Support groups form around shared economic trauma. There are stages: denial ("the market will come back"), anger ("this system is rigged"), bargaining ("maybe if I just invest more carefully"), depression ("I'll never retire"), and sometimes acceptance ("I need to find a different way to live").
The globalization of economic grief means that financial instability in one region creates anxiety in others, that inflation concerns in one country trigger economic worry in another among people whose own financial anxiety gets amplified by witnessing others' economic struggles.
Part III: Solastalgia and the Planet's Broken Heart
Environmental grief may be the purest example of how suffering now transcends geography. Glenn Albrecht's term "solastalgia" (the distress caused by environmental change in one's home environment) was coined to describe a local phenomenon. But in our interconnected world, solastalgia has gone global.
A farmer in Iowa experiences climate concern triggered by footage of drought in Australia. A teenager in Michigan develops environmental worry after seeing images of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Urban dwellers who have never seen a glacier mourn their disappearance as if they were family members.
Species loss creates a particularly acute form of global mourning. When the last member of a species dies, the grief can be planetary. Social media fills with tributes from people who had never seen that species in person but feel genuine sorrow for the loss of an entire evolutionary line. The death represents broader concerns about environmental stewardship, triggering grief that is simultaneously specific and universal.
Weather events as shared experience spread through global media networks. Extreme weather footage can trigger stress responses in people who live in different regions but have experienced similar events. Wildfire imagery documented in one location creates concern in fire-prone regions worldwide. Major weather events in one area generate empathetic responses in people who have never visited those places but feel connected through shared environmental concerns.
Seasonal changes in mood can be influenced by global climate reporting. People may experience emotional responses triggered not by their local weather but by consuming content about worldwide climate change. The emotional effort of staying informed about planetary-scale environmental challenges creates forms of anticipatory concern for futures that remain uncertain.
What's particularly striking is how environmental grief crosses generational lines in unprecedented ways. Children now experience what researchers call "climate concern" (worry about environmental changes they might witness in their lifetime). Parents report feeling concerned about their children's environmental future. Grandparents express worry for grandchildren not yet born. The traditional temporal boundaries of grief have expanded: we now process past losses, present changes, and future uncertainties simultaneously.
Part IV: The Death of Professions and the Mourning of Identity
Entire ways of being human are disappearing faster than they ever have before, and we're learning to grieve not just individual deaths but the death of entire categories of human experience.
Coal miners don't just lose jobs when mines close; they lose an identity passed down through generations. But now, through social media and global economic reporting, people worldwide witness and participate in this mourning. The death of coal isn't just a regional American tragedy; it becomes a symbol of broader economic transition that people in Germany, Poland, and Australia feel in their own communities.
Traditional journalism is dying globally, and journalists worldwide share in mourning rituals that would have been impossible in earlier eras. When local newspapers close, journalists in other cities feel the loss as if it happened to their own newsroom. When media companies conduct mass layoffs, the grief reverberates through professional networks that span continents.
Retail workers experiencing the death of physical commerce find community with similar workers globally. The closure of department stores isn't just about individual unemployment but about mourning an entire social institution, a way of life, a form of human interaction that e-commerce has rendered obsolete.
Academic careers disappearing in higher education create international networks of shared professional grief. Adjunct instructors in Ohio find solidarity with casualized lecturers in the UK, both mourning the death of stable academic employment and the intellectual life they thought they were joining.
Artisanal trades being replaced by automation create global communities of craftspeople who share not just techniques but mourning practices for skills that took generations to develop and are disappearing within decades.
The striking thing is how these professional mourning communities develop their own rituals, languages, and support systems. They create mutual aid networks, share resources, and develop collective meaning-making practices that help them grieve not just lost livelihoods but lost ways of being in the world.
Part V: The Grief That Heals and the Grief That Hurts
But here's where the tangled net gets interesting: global grief doesn't just amplify suffering. It also amplifies our capacity to hold each other.
Mutual aid networks spring up across borders. When Texas experienced widespread power outages, Venmo payments flowed in from around the world. When Beirut's port exploded, fundraising efforts organized through social media brought global resources to local need. When COVID-19 hit, international volunteer networks formed to provide emotional support, practical assistance, and simple human connection to people grieving in isolation.
Grief expertise spreads globally. Trauma therapists in New York consult with colleagues in Beirut. Indigenous healing practices from Australia inform grief counseling in Canada. Recovery models developed for one kind of loss get adapted for others: addiction recovery techniques help people grieve job loss, relationship therapy approaches inform community healing after mass violence.
Digital mourning rituals create new forms of collective remembrance. Virtual candle-lighting ceremonies unite mourners across time zones. Online memorial services allow global participation in local losses. Crowdfunded funeral expenses demonstrate how financial grief can become financial solidarity.
Anticipatory support systems develop around predictable losses. Communities form around shared knowledge of coming layoffs, climate disasters, or family illnesses, providing emotional preparation and practical resources before tragedies occur.
Yet the same networks that enable healing also enable harm. Vicarious trauma spreads as quickly as solidarity. Compassion fatigue affects people who try to care about every global tragedy. Grief competition emerges when different tragedies compete for attention and resources. Performative mourning turns genuine sorrow into social media content optimized for engagement rather than healing.
The question becomes: How do we participate in global grief without being overwhelmed by it? How do we care about worldwide suffering without developing secondary trauma from constant exposure to pain?
Part VI: Learning to Grieve at Global Scale
Some individuals and communities are developing what might be called "grief literacy": the ability to navigate worldwide sorrow without drowning in it.
Boundaries become essential skills: learning to feel genuine empathy for distant suffering while maintaining emotional resources for local relationships and personal healing. Developing what therapists call "compassionate detachment" involves caring deeply while accepting the limits of what any individual can address.
Ritual adaptation helps people process global grief. Some families hold weekly moments of silence for worldwide tragedies. Some communities organize local actions in response to distant disasters. Some individuals develop personal practices (meditation, journaling, creative expression) that help them process the constant stream of global loss without becoming overwhelmed.
Solidarity without merger becomes a crucial skill. Learning to stand with people experiencing losses you haven't personally suffered, while acknowledging the differences in your experiences. Offering support without centering your own emotional needs. Contributing resources without expecting gratitude or recognition.
Information diets become emotional health practices. Choosing how much global tragedy to consume, when to engage with distant suffering, how to stay informed without becoming traumatized by constant exposure to pain.
Local action as global healing helps people channel grief into constructive engagement. Understanding that the best response to worldwide suffering might be to address the versions of those problems that exist in your own community. Recognizing that local healing contributes to global healing in ways that consuming distant tragedy does not.
Closing: The Net That Holds Us All
We stand at an unprecedented moment in human history: for the first time, we can participate in the grief of our entire species simultaneously. Every day brings awareness of losses we could never have known about in previous eras. Every tragedy becomes potentially everyone's tragedy. Every death can become everyone's mourning.
This creates both terrible burdens and tremendous possibilities.
The burden is obvious: we risk drowning in sorrow that isn't ours to carry, burning out from caring about tragedies we can't address, developing secondary trauma from constant exposure to global suffering.
But the possibility is equally unprecedented: we might be developing a form of collective emotional intelligence that could help us address global problems more effectively than ever before. We might be learning forms of solidarity that transcend the boundaries of nation, race, religion, and class. We might be discovering that shared grief can become shared wisdom, shared strength, shared commitment to reducing the suffering that affects us all.
The tangled net we're pulling from the deep is soaked with tears from every corner of the earth. But it's also woven from threads of connection, empathy, and mutual aid that span continents. It carries not just the weight of global sorrow, but the possibility of global healing.
We are all grieving together now. The question is whether we can learn to heal together too.
We're discovering that some grief makes us smaller (more isolated, more overwhelmed, more hopeless in the face of enormous loss). But other grief makes us larger (more connected, more compassionate, more committed to reducing the suffering that touches us all).
The difference, perhaps, lies not in the grief itself, but in how we hold it. Whether we let it isolate us or connect us. Whether we use it to build walls or bridges. Whether we allow it to paralyze us or motivate us toward the patient, unglamorous work of healing that happens one relationship, one community, one small act of care at a time.
The net is tangled, heavy with sorrow, difficult to pull from the deep waters of our interconnected world. But it's also strong enough to hold us all, if we learn to trust its weaving and add our own threads of connection, care, and hope.
May we be gentle with each other in our shared grieving. May we learn to distinguish between the sorrow that isolates and the sorrow that connects. And may we discover that in learning to mourn together, we also learn to heal together, to hope together, to build the kinds of communities that can hold both individual pain and collective resilience.
The grief is global now. Perhaps the healing can be too.
The next edition of The Tangled Net arrives next week.
May you move through this week with wisdom about which griefs are yours to carry, compassion for the suffering that touches us all, and hope that our shared sorrows might teach us how to create shared healing.
If your own net feels too heavy to hold alone, we're here.
The California Grief Center offers support for individuals, couples, families, and organizations across California and virtually nationwide.
References:
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Butler, Judith. Grievable Life: The Power and Politics of Mourning. Verso, 2020.
Hickman, Caroline, et al. "Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses." The Lancet Planetary Health, 2021.
Hoggett, Paul, editor. Climate Psychology: Facing the Climate and Environmental Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Massumi, Brian. The Power at the End of the Economy. Duke University Press, 2015.
Panu, Pihkala. "Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis: An Analysis of Eco-Anxiety and Climate Anxiety." Sustainability, 2020.
Ray, Sarah Jaquette. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety. University of California Press, 2020.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. Penguin Books, 2010.
Woodbury, Zhiwa. "Climate Trauma, Climate Grief, and Mental Health." In Mental Health and Our Changing Climate, edited by Susan Clayton. American Psychological Association, 2020.
