By Erika Edwards: For Complete Post, Click Here…
When Jennifer Ritz Sullivan’s mother, Earla, died of Covid in December 2020, pandemic protocols meant she couldn’t be in the hospital with Earla as she took her last breath.
She couldn’t hug her sister — or be hugged in return — as the two women grieved virtually on FaceTime.
So Ritz Sullivan, 38, of Goshen, Massachusetts, turned to social media as an outlet for her grief.
“I got on Twitter specifically to rage about the death of my mom,” she said. “I needed it. It became a room to scream into.”
But she wasn’t screaming into a void. When Ritz Sullivan publicly shared details of her mother’s Covid death, online trolls pounced.
“I was called a ‘f—ing clown,'” Ritz Sullivan said. “I was told my mom was never a real person. I was told that my mom probably had pre-existing conditions, so it ‘didn’t matter’ that she died.”
The experience has been disheartening. “People are just incredibly cruel,” she said.
