The COVID-19 pandemic forces all of us to face unique challenges that lead to difficult emotions. These emotions could be shock, confusion, anxiety, disorientation, frustration, disappointment, and guilt. Among the emotional experiences, grief is often overlooked and denied because it could be overwhelming to a lot of us. Grief is the response to a loss. Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, we are experiencing a collective loss. We lost a sense of normalcy. Our physical beings are assigned new roles, tasks, locations, and positions. Our psychological beings are asked to show up or not to show up in a way that’s not familiar. We lost the world we knew. Below are some thoughts of how we may go through the grieving process together.
Name the loss. Name it as grief.
We lost our routines. We lost a sense of familiarity, stability, and safety. We lost the ways we knew how to connect with each other and how to set boundaries. We lost our usual coping. This is a collective loss. We are grieving together.
Grief needs to be witnessed.
Grief can’t be solved. Grief needs to be seen. It can be seen by eyes, by the body sensations, by emotional expressions, or even by our imagination. In the time of the pandemic, we are all in this together and we are all impacted. I see your grief, and my grief needs to be seen. We witness each other’s grief.
Don’t judge each other’s grief. Don’t compare suffering.
The judgment doesn’t help in grieving because it provokes shame and demands punishment. Neither shame nor blame brings back what we lost.
There is no short-cut to bypass the painful emotions.
Emotions are real. That means emotions have a start and an end. Let it run its course. When it became so unbearable, we may learn ways to manage it at the moment.
Find gratitude in what we do about the loss. Find it in what we do after the loss.
Loss happened. Loss is not a lesson or a blessing in disguise. We don’t try to find meaning in loss. We find meaning in us. We don’t find meaning in trauma. We find meaning in resilience.
Know the stages of grief and loss to describe, not prescribe.
The five stages of grief and loss (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) provide a framework for us to understand ourselves. Note that grieving is not a linear process.
References and Resources
That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social
David Kessler and Brené on Grief and Finding Meaning. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/david-kessler-and-brene-on-grief-and-finding-meaning/
Kübler-Ross E (1969). On Death and Dying. Routledge. https://books.google.com/books/about/On_Death_and_Dying.html?id=X2MskIklkqIC
Kessler, David ( 2019). Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Simon and Schuster. https://books.google.com/books?id=H920DwAAQBAJ