Image Source: Getty / Kimberly White [1]
Everyone deals with pain and grief differently, and for Beanie Feldstein, losing her brother forced her to "learn an immeasurable amount about the bandwidth of my own heart." In a new heartfelt essay for InStyle, the 25-year-old actress opened up about the death of her and Jonah Hill's brother [2], Jordan Feldstein. Jordan died in December 2017 at 40 years old from a blood clot that caused a pulmonary embolism [3], and it forever changed the way Beanie viewed the world. "Grief Glasses," the essay is titled, symbolises her outlook. "Sometimes I can push the glasses to the end of my nose so I can peer over them to see the world the way I used to see," Beanie wrote. "But I can only see over or around my old perspective. I can never see it totally as it was ever again."
To the world, Jordan was known as Maroon 5's manager [4], but to Beanie, he was her big brother. "He was a remarkably generous, intelligent, loving person. He was an incredible father, beloved by his boys. He was a deeply devoted son. He was a brilliant creative mind," she wrote in the essay posted on her Instagram [5]. "He gave me so many things, including my name . . . The pain is so unbearable at times, so unremitting. Yet, in addition to the deluge of feelings leaking out of me at all times, I have found the process of grief (because it is and will always be a process, never finished, never concluded) to be just as resonant in my mind as it is in my heart."
While nothing could ever placate this sadness, Beanie has found solace in spending time with others [7] who have experienced similar loss, or those who "wear the same prescription" of grief glasses. "There is this profound feeling of connection, not only because you both have experienced that pain, but because you also see the rest of life differently than everyone else," she wrote. "It is not only an acknowledgment of shared emotion, but a recognition of shared lived perspective."
These gut-wrenching and life-changing emotions are something that the Booksmart actress [8] never could have anticipated, but it led to a seismic shift in Beanie's outlook, and she's accepted the glasses. "While I wish I could rip my grief glasses off my face and have it all be a dream, I try to recognise what the glasses have given me: that unique blend of humanity that is simultaneously the darkest dark and the brightest bright."