Processing Grief in The Time of the Virus

Week One of being homebound by the Corona Virus was really sweet in our house.

I knew that getting a routine in place right away would be important, so I created a plan that included a lot of structured play time, outside time, and a little bit of academic learning time.

By Week Two, I felt like I was hitting my stride. I repurposed a set of drawers to create a Homeschool Station. I collected a bunch of online resources. I added a “Morning Meeting” to the schedule to build in time to connect with my kids and communicate the plan for the day.

However, in Week Two I also started wearing the same clothes two days in a row. I stopped fixing my hair and just wore a hat every day. I started noticing some signs of stress: headaches, stomachaches. And I felt so tired.

We have now finished three weeks in self-quarantine, and my headache is almost constant. My brain feels fuzzy—on Thursday, while making dinner, I opened a can of soup and started pouring it into the garbage can instead of the pan on the stove. I am feeding my kids, but not myself until well after lunch time.

Like pretty much everyone on the face of the earth right now, I’m in Survival Mode, and one thing I have learned about myself is that I am very high-functioning in Survival Mode. In some ways, this is me at my best: getting things done, managing people, problem solving. But it can only go on for so long. Pretty soon—like, last week, I’d say, grief begins to set in and things get really, really hard.

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief lately.

We had a Coaching Call about grief a few weeks ago. Our guest speaker was trauma and adoption therapist Barbara Tantrum, whose new book, The Adoptive Parent’s Handbook: A Guide to Healing Trauma and Thriving with Your Foster or Adopted Child,* is available for pre-order now. In that call, which is available as a digital download here (through April 12), we talked specifically about the grief children in foster care and foster parents themselves might face. Barbara gave some great insight and suggestions for how to process that grief.

But now, here we are as a global community living through an unprecedented time of stress, and grief is going to become a huge part of all of our lives. Students are grieving the loss of school, friends, beloved teachers, and normalcy. High school and college seniors are grieving the loss of end-of-school-career traditions, like prom and graduation.

As we make our way through these days of The Virus, it is imperative for our mental well-being that we make time to deal with our grief.

Grief that is not dealt with manifests in many ways, including physical and emotional unwellness. For someone like me, it looks like headaches and yelling at my kids, extreme anger, feelings of depression and lack of motivation. It looks like not showering, not getting dressed in actual clothes, skipping meals, and drinking too much (coffee, wine, whatever).

So what can we be doing now to address our grief and process it in a healthy way?

Recognize the stages of grief and take some time to reflect where you’re at in the process. According to the book On Grief and Grieving*, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This past week, I realized I was somewhere between anger and depression. Recognizing that and taking a good look at where I am was what I needed to help me move toward acceptance and the sixth stage of grief, which is finding meaning. I’m not there yet, but I am hopeful that I’m on my way.
Name your grief what it is: GRIEF. Take some time to talk or journal about what you miss and what you’re sad about. I miss time alone. I miss seeing my kids’ teachers at drop-off. I miss going to church. I miss going to the zoo, which is something we would be doing at least once a week right now. I miss feeling like the world is predictable. I miss the conveniences of life that I took for granted.
Take care of your body. Are you eating too much or not enough? Sleeping too much or not enough? Exercising too much or not enough? How’s your hygiene? Be honest as you assess yourself. Tend to your physical well being. For me, this means taking a 20 minute walk or jog every day, just up and down my street for 20 minutes, and doing an online yoga class for at least 15 minutes. It means showering every night before bed. It means getting dressed in actual clothes, not putting on sweats that I can wear, sleep in, and wear again. This means eating oatmeal for breakfast (even though I have no appetite), fruit for snack, and drinking plenty of water (not just coffee, which is what I crave when I’m stressed).
Find something to laugh about. I had one of my worst days as a parent in a long time yesterday. I was awful to my kids. But later, at dinner time, we started talking about “Mom’s Worst Moments” over the years, and as the kids talked about some of the worst things I’ve done and said to them, we were all laughing. Everyone is stressed. But everyone is also eager to laugh. We are watching funny videos with our kids, and I’m checking in with my favorite late night hosts (God bless Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert). I also love all the parodies I’ve been looking up—this one is particularly funny to me, and you cannot go wrong with The Holderness Family on YouTube.
Find someone to help. I’ve been reaching out via Marco Polo and FaceTime to my single friends who are doing this thing alone. We’ve been laughing together about how this is a time of extremes: for them, extreme time alone. For me, extreme time together. I’ve been sending money to food banks and supporting some low-income families in my kids’ school with food and help with rent. Yesterday, we took a kite outside and flew it in front of our next door neighbor’s window as their only child, a three-year-old boy we adore, watched and laughed from the safety of his living room. These are things I can do, and as an Enneagram 1(w)2, helping others helps me. What can you do?
Find the “Isolation Blessings.” That’s what my mom is calling them—those good things that are happening because of the Time of the Virus. We had 30 people witness our adoption of our foster son last week via Google Meet, rather than the few who would have joined us in person. Our children with disrupted attachments are getting what they need most: time with us. We are in closer communication with our neighbors (albeit via email) than we’ve ever been. I’ve been in touch with many friends I had lost touch with in the past month, because we have time and we’re thinking about one another (yay Marco Polo!) We made an offer on a house yesterday, and the sellers accepted it rather than entertaining other offers because they don’t want a lot of people coming in and out of their home to look at it. My mom is teaching music lessons to my kids twice a week via FaceTime.

We don’t need to put a lot of pressure on ourselves in this season. We don’t need to “get things done” or “use this time productively.” We are grieving. We are surviving. We need to be gentle with ourselves.

But we do need to take care of ourselves. My friend Rebecca Beidel, a marriage and family therapist in New York City, shared this article recently and commented,

We need to take care of ourselves and each other during this time. The trauma is real. Reach out for the help you need. Be honest with someone about your struggles. Stay in touch with friends and family. Don’t isolate inside your isolation. Come out of your room and do something to connect with others. The virus is a real threat, but there are other damaging effects we need to take care to avoid.