Someone sent me this article the other day and then a different person sent me an amazing podcast by Brene Brown where she is talking with the same author, David Kessler.
He is the world’s foremost expert on grief and co-wrote with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss. His new book adds another stage to the process, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. So I thought I must share this insight with you here because it resonated with me…
Kessler explains…
“We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”
Personally, I agree and there are a lot of losses to grieve. Grief is not just about the death of a loved one. For me, any change can be a loss and any loss can trigger grief. Here we all are with the loss of how things used to be. Loss of our jobs. Loss of physical touch. Loss of gathering to celebrate together. Loss of our routines. Loss of the way the world was before all this happened.
And…”Your loss is not a blessing or a test, it’s not about finding gratitude…loss just happens in this world.”
So what can we do with all this grief?
The stages of grief are not really linear but rather act as a guide. Understanding them helps us navigate…
Kessler says, “There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.
If we can name it, perhaps we can manage it. We have to name it in order to feel it and feel it to heal it.
One thought on “What you are feeling is probably grief”