3 useful lenses through which to view our present grief

Everyone is grieving at present.  Proof of this is our need of humour.  As a world, we are still in a state of numbness and disbelief.

Whether you are:

·      a child who is confused by what is going on, 

·      a parent overwhelmed with home-schooling, 

·      a teacher struggling to set syllabus, 

·      a health worker trying to keep up and not become infected, 

·      a worker who has lost their job, 

·      an athlete who is no more events to compete in and is losing shape,

·      a person whose skills have been made redundant,

·      a person with the illness itself,

·      stuck in self-isolation or quarantine

·      etc

... or any combination of these, these issues are only part of our problem; they’re only part of the grief burden we are carrying at any time.

There is a threefold lens I want to share with you. This will help us frame our reality, which will help each of us understand why we are feeling the way we are feeling. It will also help us accept that what we’re feeling is normal. Correspondingly we won’t judge ourselves as harshly as we otherwise might.

The threefold lens is simply this.  There is:

·      a grief that is common to all of us

·      a grief that some of us share

·      a grief that is unique to us alone

Let’s take each one of these lenses through which to view grief and peer through each one.

GRIEF THAT IS COMMON TO ALL

The ambience of anxiety is increased overall, as society wrestles with the truly incredible and unprecedented reality that the world faces; a health, financial and social burden.

Everyone is affected in some way.  The present circumstances bring change into everyone’s life.  It’s unavoidable.

People may respond in denial, as if this is no big deal, but that is still a grief response, because the reality is too big to contemplate or take seriously for these.

People may respond the other way.  They may buy up all the toilet paper.  And observable grief — fear, anger, etc — may be a constant pattern.

The majority of us are affected, perhaps in less observable ways, neither by denial nor preoccupation, because we’re all impacted.  The grief is common to us all.  We are in this together.

GRIEF THAT SOME OF US SHARE

Having all experienced general feelings of loss and anxiety — some very little, some very much — there is a common thread through it all, but not everything that the next person experiences do we experience.

Some of us have lost jobs, but some of us are busier than ever, and whilst some of us don’t understand the boredom that some feel, others would pay a handsome price for a purpose at this time.

Both types of experience involve change, and because change involves loss, grief is experienced by people on both sides of the fence.

Few people accept change as an opportunity, and there are varying types of change, so there are different sets of loss experienced.

The variety of the grief that we personally experience is similar but not the same to that which others experience.

Some of us have experienced significant loss in the past, and this can both be a disadvantage or an advantage in dealing with the present grief.

GRIEF THAT IS UNIQUE TO US ALONE

Each of us respond to crises in different ways.  There is no set way to grieve.  The present crisis affects us all very individually.  And although the general ambience of anxiety has increased, this affects us all so differently.

We all have multiple different factors going on at any one time, which makes our experience of the trauma we’re all facing different; different perceptions, life situations, social factors affecting us, among many more.

The fact is we’re not only going to grieve differently, we’re allowed to, and we’re best to accept that this will be the case in any event.

Our grief is common, shared and unique.  We’re in this together, though not everyone will understand, and at times it will only be God who will understand.

Photo by Drew Graham on Unsplash