Sugarcoating hard truths only isolates those suffering
Between those who have lost their homes to hurricanes and fires and those who feel forced to hastily discard their belongings as they flee their country in fear of persecution for their ethnic background, there is an undeniable sense of loss, transformation, and transition in the air.
This is the Death card (tarot) in action. It’s not always literal death, but it’s the end of something. Well-meaning tarot readers often downplay the meaning of this card by saying that every ending is just a new beginning, completely overlooking how these endings are difficult to celebrate because of the immense loss they carry.
The Death card is minimized to parallel Hollywood’s contemplative aftermath shot. You know the one. It’s the scene at the end of the movie where the main character breathes out and looks around at their new surroundings to symbolize that they’re getting a fresh start. These visual cues convey relief and peace with a hint of bittersweet acceptance.
This Hollywood-style framing conditions us to expect that every ending comes with a peaceful resolution, but that’s not rooted in reality.
Not all endings are liberating, and not all new beginnings are welcome.
I don’t care if my new beginning will lead to a bottomless bank account and mansions around the world. If I lose the home I worked so hard to pay for myself to a hurricane, I will be devasted. If I ever have to seek asylum in another country and abandon my friends, my cat, and yes, even my belongings, I will be devasted. I will not look at the tiny new apartment in a foreign country with relief and peace.
I will cry for months.
I will mourn the life I worked years to build.
I will mourn the plans I had for the future.
And I will mourn who I was before the event occurred.
Sugarcoating the Death card is also an incorrect interpretation. Death doesn’t ask us to “focus on the bright side” while our world burns. It asks us to face the loss, to grieve it, and to accept that transformation does not come without destruction (yes, in a way that is slightly different from the Tower card).
By reducing the Death card to an inspirational soundbite, tarot readers dismiss the reality of grief, leaving querents feeling unheard and misunderstood.
The same can be said about journalists.
When news anchors refuse to use accurate terminology for major news, they are sugarcoating reality. You know the word that should’ve been used when they called it a “Roman Salute.” You know that the word for Guantanamo Bay is one for a camp that concentrates a group of undesirables in a hard-to-reach location. And you know what to call someone who disregards the Constitution and ignores checks and balances.
But they refuse to say them. They talk around them, the way I am talking around them here (because I’m only one person and not a multi-million dollar news network). And when networks refuse to name the situation, they minimize the seriousness. The pain. The fear. The grief.
Then you have half of the viewers thinking things aren’t “that bad” and with the hope that someone who is definitely not them, because they have to go to work and pay some bills, will step in and do something. And then you have the people who are being actively affected by the unnamed events scrambling and feeling like they’re going crazy because no one seems to know or care that their very existence is being outlawed.
When reality is softened, when the full weight of loss, oppression, or danger is smoothed over with careful language, it doesn’t make the truth any less devastating. It just makes it easier for those unaffected to ignore.
Sugarcoating the Death card doesn’t change the fact that people are grieving, it just isolates them in their grief. And when journalists refuse to call things what they are, it doesn’t stop the march of authoritarianism, the displacement of families, or the erosion of rights, it just keeps the comfortable from feeling alarmed. The ones suffering still feel the weight of the moment. They are still mourning their homes, their safety, and their futures.
They do not get the luxury of euphemisms.
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