Midori Anderson and Orlando Foreman met on Tinder in the summer of 2019 while studying at the University of Arkansas. In November, he brought her flowers and tried to spell “Do you need to be my girlfriend?”with rose petals on his bed. but no space. She helps keep the card he gave her in her wallet: “I didn’t need to eat your mother’s vegetables without us being official. “
After graduating in 2020, Foreman helped her move to Plano, Texas, and then returned for her senior year.
During their only weekend in September, they went out for dinner. On the way back, Foreman collapsed. She rushed him to the hospital, but he died that night. An autopsy showed that the 23-year-old student, born in Romania, had a blockage in his heart.
Anderson was left alone in his apartment, his toothbrush and touch lens case in the sink, his shirts hanging in the closet.
“I feel like when he died, I was left for lost. I lost myself. I lost, I told him everything,” said Anderson, 24.
He made a TikTok video: “A Day in the Life of a Bereaved Bride. “It got 900,000 likes.
“TikTok made me feel like someone listened to me,” she said.
It was there that he packed a box of souvenirs for Foreman, showed off his new tattoo (“dragostea mea”, my love in Romanian) and celebrated the first anniversary of his death.
“In addition to my mother and a therapist, TikTok is what helped me stay alive in one of the most difficult times of my life,” Anderson said.
TikTok is a new generation facing death and loss.
Young people share deeply deprived and vulnerable moments of grief in short videos, creating a sense of network and relieving loneliness, grief experts say.
With hashtags like #grieftok, #griefjourney, #grief, #griefandloss, and #loss, raw pain mixes with TikTok celebrations.
The videos include a missing daughter of her mother, who died after a nine-year war on lung cancer, and her brother, who was diagnosed with lymphoma the same night and died seven months later. Another shows a mother throwing butterflies in remembrance of her. young daughter who died of cancer.
“On TikTok, they’re very open,” said Moa Eriksson Krutrök, an associate professor of media and communications at Umeå University in Sweden. “People share their interior. “
According to Krutrök, the secret sauce is TikTok’s “For You” feed that is organized through advisory algorithms.
In some cases, those algorithms have sent other people into dark rabbit holes. TikTok says it has recycled its algorithms to recognize potentially harmful patterns and prevent other people from sinking into sadness. TikTok also allows users to delete videos with words or hashtags. you don’t need to see it in their “For You” or “Next” feeds.
“These algorithms (connect us) with other people who feel the same way we do,” Krutrök said.
TikTok was all K-pop for Lisa Lu before answering a call from mega-star BTS to create a video for the song “Life Goes On. “
The lyrics, “Like an arrow in the blue sky, the day passes,” reminded Lu of his mother, Priscilla Chiu, who died in 2018 of pancreatic cancer, guiding her “to the end” like the arrow.
Around 2 a. m. , Lu posted a 40-second video featuring Chiu over the years: grainy photographs of her as a young mother with Lu; Chiu smiling at the camera after her hair has fallen out; a close-up of her tying a necklace around Lu’s neck on her wedding day.
“What she taught me along the way was that the most productive thing I could do for her was to keep going and moving on. And that’s how I can honor her and this life she gave us,” Lu said. this, I was able to put my whole center on this video. “
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Lu woke up with thousands of and I like it.
“People kept commenting on her lovely smile and how much they can see the love in my mother’s eyes,” Lu said. “It’s itself a comfort I never thought I could get from millions of strangers. “
Thanks to social media, public expressions of grief are no longer taboo, says Heather Servaty-Seib, a psychology professor who leads Purdue’s grief and loss studies team.
“It’s imaginable that this will make grief and loss less difficult to communicate,” he said.
Looking for a human connection on Facebook or TikTok has become even less unusual in COVID, as other people have faced losses while crying remotely, says Chinasa Elue, an associate professor of school leadership and higher education at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
Elue began investigating the pain after his mother died in early 2019, nine months before the country went into quarantine. He said he found comfort in turning to Instagram.
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“Once the dust has settled, after other people have stopped showing up with meals, after the funeral is over, we are alone to cope with the harsh paintings of mourning,” Elue said. “Online spaces, especially in the midst of the pandemic. , have provided a very important outlet for other people to really share their own journey of mourning. “
Vivian Núñez experienced the difference between grief and social media.
Nunez was in elementary school in 2003 when his mother died. A shy girl who grew up in the Washington Heights community in New York and part of a circle of Ecuadorian-American relatives who did not blatantly communicate the loss, confided her emotions in a newspaper.
“I felt like it was the only way to feel comforted through someone who had me,” she says. “There’s no way I’m going to get attached to other people. “
During her last year of college, when she was 21 years old, her grandmother also passed away, who as a momentary mother. Nunez couldn’t bear to feel so alone again. He opened an Instagram account in 2014.
At the time, few Instagram accounts talked about death and loss. This led to treatment for anxiety and depression and a career focused on grief and wellness.
“The web has democratized grief,” said Nunez, 29, a writer, content author and host of the “Happy to Be Here” podcast. it might not be affordable for many people. It was free, it was accessible, and it was as vulnerable as it could be.
When Carolyn Moor’s husband Chad, an architect, died in a hit-and-run while returning home from dinner on Valentine’s Day in 2000, she suddenly found herself alone at age 37 with two girls.
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“I know what it’s like to move into the black hole of grief. You have that experience. You leave the hospital. You come out with all the brochures they give you, from the funeral home, and good luck with that. “said Moor, 59, who lives in Orlando, Florida.
After appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s TV screen to talk about the pain, other widows began to come out. She founded the Modern Widows Club and held meetings in her living room.
The turning point for the organization came in 2011 when he joined Facebook and in 2014 when he joined Instagram. Both platforms made widows, even remote areas, connect.
“It’s a lifesaver,” says Sabra Robinson, who was widowed in 2012 after her husband died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
When he couldn’t locate a black widow mourning aid organization, he created his own. Their ranks have increased COVID.
Members meet in a personal Facebook organization to communicate brazenly about the loss or to get recommendations on Social Security benefits, including going out on dates.
“It’s anything that’s saved a lot of women’s lives,” said Robinson, founder of Black Women Widows Empowered who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Social media has become a place to mourn all sorts of losses, says YouTuber and legal therapist Kati Morton.
“I think we’ve been told that grief is anything that happens when someone dies,” Morton said. But “we can cry a lot of things. ” A breakup. A loss of employment. Even social isolation during the pandemic.
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“I think other people feel smart to hear that other people are going through something similar, that they’re not alone and that there’s something to say,” Morton said.
For Molly Burke, a legally blind YouTuber, this means mourning the death of her consulting dogs. At 28 years old, he has already had to say goodbye to 3 and suffers with the inevitable of losing more.
“They are much more than an animal to us. They’re literally a lifesaver,” Burke said. “If I don’t have my dog, I’m much less independent. In fact, my confidence is falling. Up to that point I feel and safe falls.
While recording the video for others, Burke said she also recorded herself.
“It’s almost like therapy, you know?” she said. ” You’re starting to get to the bottom of your own thoughts. “
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TikTok is not a replacement for professional help, says Jacqueline Garcia, a licensed clinical social worker who has more than 67,000 fans watching her brain conditioning videos. Most other people want videos that are longer than 30 seconds to perceive their feelings. And not everyone who provides recommendations on TikTok is an expert.
“Grief doesn’t look pretty, it doesn’t feel pretty. It can be such a scary party,” he said. media) it’s not a therapy. “
And, like any space, GriefTok has a dark side.
Dr. Serign Marong, 43, a family doctor from Tucson, Arizona, began posting TikToks after his first wife died in 2014 from a blood clot in her lungs.
He said 99 percent of the responses were positive and that many users shared their own experiences. But there were also hurtful comments.
“Some other people sought to be sarcastic there and say things like ‘Oh, I bet she had the COVID vaccine,'” he said, though his wife died years before the pandemic.
But Marong says being so open on TikTok has a central component to her grieving process.
“There was a time when it was dark for me. I had suicidal thoughts,” Marong said. their children. ” Once I started dealing with things and talking about them with people, I regained some motivation. “