March 25, 2020
Grief and Perseverance – Sarah Brooks
March 2020
With the surge of the novel coronavirus or COVID19, life as we know it has dramatically changed without much time for us to prepare or process. In thinking about it and trying to deal with our new reality this past week, I began to feel like we all lost something. Collectively as a society we experienced a death – death of society as we know it. Death of our freedom. Death of the socialization we are used to. With death comes grief. And like a sudden death, as occurs with an accident, it leaves us unprepared for what to expect. We have experienced this together now, on a societal scale, which makes it so much more enormous than just one family losing a member. WE ARE ALL GRIEVING.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified 5 stages of grief—
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
Over the next several weeks and months, we all may experience these stages to different degrees and in different orders. We may experience them more than once. The thing is, we will likely all experience them as we navigate these uncharted waters and come to realize that life as we knew it no longer exists. We are now in a COVID19 world and we must eventually come to accept that life as we knew it has changed. We cannot just go out whenever we want, to any destination we want. We must prepare, we must plan. Do we need to go out? When we go out, are we prepared to stay a safe distance from others? Have we washed our hands? What does our future look like? I am not sure any of us currently know.
So, realize that we are all grieving. Realize that people may not be the way they were before. We are hurting. We are in denial. We are angry. We are bargaining. We are depressed. But eventually, it is my hope that we will all eventually find acceptance. So, until then, let us all be a little more patient with each other. Be a little kinder, a little gentler. This is my prayer and wish for us all.