The pandemic was a gamechanger. Many of us lost family and friends. A lot of us lost jobs, and all of us have had to deal with changes in our everyday lives. We lost the freedom to explore the world outside as the boundary between work and home became blurred. Some of us were so blindsided by these changes that we lost our desire to dream.
The truth is that we can only recover our loss if we acknowledge our grief. Doing so isn’t an easy process but we cannot allow the pandemic to take hold of us.
It is unfortunate that we cannot grieve properly at this time. When a loved one dies, we couldn’t even attend the funeral or take part in the ceremonies and practices we have gotten used to in the past. The pandemic made it even harder for us to attain a feeling of closure. The pandemic has turned something difficult into something even more challenging.
I am not foreign to death. When I was 27 years old, I lost my firstborn son, Miguel, at six months. It was a perinatal death. I was in a dark place then. Ten years ago, I also lost my father. These losses, while both painful, differ in experience and context. But the times were different. I could be with my family. I could seek comfort from my mother. I could go through rituals like prayers and novenas. I also followed the advice of one of my mentors and chose to keep myself busy.
Grief is an intense psychological, physiological, and emotional experience. It is also highly personal. It impacts our entire being. Some who grieve do not sleep, eat well, or have trouble going about their day. Grief manifests itself in different ways. There is no right or wrong way in grief. There isn’t even a timeline.
As painful and intricate the process of grieving is, it is far more difficult not to grieve. Some people actually refuse to grieve. Some people feel the need to be strong for the people around them. However, being strong is not equivalent to grieving. In fact, we can draw strength from the process of grief.
We cannot compare our experiences of grief with other people. We also cannot compare how we processed grief at different points of our lives. Who you are today is different from who you were then. Each loss has a different meaning. It has a different spectrum of pain and impact on our system. We have to exert effort to understand what the experience is trying to teach or reveal to us.
Elisabeth Kubler Ross initiated the concept of applying stages to grief. This is more popularly known as DABDA or denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, grief is non-linear. It is not something that you go through straightforwardly. Grief is messy and knows no order. Grief is about acknowledging the experience so we can help ourselves in the process. If we name it, we can start healing it. The moment that we admit to ourselves that we are grieving is a big start. We need to feel so we can heal. – WITH PAU DE VERA