Ariana Grande

The greater the grief, the greater capacity for joy

I’m in the midst of quite the Ariana Grande hyperfixation. This week, it’s Positions, to be exact. Like many of her fans, I find myself rotating through old albums while highly anticipating the drop of her upcoming album, Petal, next week. She’s been the pop star I’ve felt most connected to for as long as I can remember. First off, we’re the same age, so her trials and tribulations in love always seem perfectly on time. Second, we’re both water signs. Put another way, we share a tendency to go through life as feelers first, who require every emotional experience be a portal for transformation.

Then, there are the not as widely relatable similarities. Falling in love with and having to walk away from someone with an addiction. Wearing your heart on your sleeve every time, even as life piles up examples of it leading to pain. Her lyrics have long been the backdrop for every heartbreak, every crush, every ovulation cycle. But her essence is what makes me a fan. Her sense of humor, her strangeness, her penchant for drama, her trying on many different personas (embarrassingly, publicly) to try to figure out what feels authentic, and her quiet resilience. She is someone who perfectly represents my belief that the greater the grief you’ve experienced, the greater the capacity for joy you unlock.

I spend a lot of time on the internet, so of course that means I’ve seen the nonstop discourse on the ponytail princess over the years. But never have I seen someone connect the dots between the new level of contentment we’ve seen unlocked as a result of her many life-altering, grief-inducing experiences. The concert bombing that left 22 of her fans dead. The death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller from a drug overdose, after a two year relationship and the agony that comes from choosing to exit. Oh and let’s not forget the influx of internet trolls blaming her for his death. The Pete Davidson of it all, a whirlwind romance that felt like it could fix everything until the crushing realization that’s not how love works. Whatever happened on the Wicked set that put her in a state of disassociation for more than two years.

And here’s the thing with grief. It compounds. The first big one changes the default resting state of your nervous system. From that point on, it’s impossible to grieve for only what’s in front of you. The grief of losing my relationship was impossible to separate from the grief of losing my dad. The grief of losing a pet became impossible to separate from the grief of losing my relationship and the grief of losing my dad. Even the minor shit has a way of snowballing down the hill towards BIG GRIEF #1. Work stress. A friend fight. A situationship gone wrong. Everything becomes more heightened, more activated by this new nervous system you’re working with.

Anyone who has been through major grief knows this. They also know there is always an inflection point where you must make a choice. Do I let this take me down? Or do I chose to let it transform me?

Which is the part that many seem to miss in Ariana. How every time something devastating happens, she seems a bit lighter. Not in a bubbly, everything is great type of way. In a way that communicates a new level of release has been unlocked, without a word being spoken. On the outside, it can seem odd. Crazy, even. But when you’ve been through a traumatic loss, you also lose a great weight. The weight of gripping desperately to control. With each subsequent loss, there becomes a new opportunity to deepen this shedding. Because without it, you can’t make space for the joy. So that it can resist the grief, which has already made a home inside you, with or without your consent.

She is living her life in the way that all the books talk about. The ones that try to help guide you out of the grief, to teach you to alchemize pain into art, to hold both truths at once. It’s seen in both her despair and fulfillment as she performed at the One Love festival to benefit the Manchester victims. It’s seen in two back to back albums filled with emotional dichotomy as a response to losing Mac, gaining Pete, then losing Pete. In Sweetener, “better off,” a song of defeated surrender is immediately followed by the giddy hope of “goodnight n go.” In thank u, next she opens the album with “Imagine,” a track that instills confusion in the listener, leaving you both devastated and faithful, and not knowing which feeling is right. It’s beautiful in a way that pop music rarely gets credit for.

Her light is still so bright. Brighter, even, because of what’s happened to her. The way she continues to show up for her fans, who understand what she’s singing a bit too well. And continuing to show up for herself, choosing paths that lead to joy no matter the cost. Because she has to. Because otherwise the grief will take up too much real estate. And because the world needs more of this. The people who beam with an internal light so radiant that people simply cannot believe what you’ve been through. That’s the ultimate compliment.

xoxox Merel

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