If you’ve been around me at any time for more than an hour, you’ve seen me have a hot flash. I’m really good at them.  These days it seems I’ve added another kind of flash to my repertoire. I have been having grief flashes. I’ll be doing something and I remember my brother and his sudden passing in the end of May. Like the hot flashes, it comes in unexpectedly with an intensity that always surprises me. I’m okay and then I’m flattened.

Now when I have hot flashes, my kids usually sort of roll their eyes with a “There she goes again” grin. With the grief flashes, they get flustered. My younger daughter especially will scramble to help me.

“Let’s sing a happy song Mom,” she’ll say, anything she thinks might take away my pain. So sweet of her. But here’s the deal. Probably a few times a month I tell Kim how much everything we do at the Wisdom Coalition has changed my life. We talk a lot about feeling our feelings and because I come from a long history of stuffing, denying and ignoring painful feelings, I am dedicated now to reversing that unproductive trend in myself. I understand, because of our research, that pushing away and shutting down painful feelings is a dead end street, is exhausting and leaves me acting out on those feelings when they start to boil over.

So, I’ve told the kids, this pain isn’t for them to take away. Just let me have it, take it in and move through it. And just like the hot flashes, while I think I won’t survive the intensity sometimes, I always do. The worst of it moves out as quickly as it moves in. The kids now ask, “Can I give you a hug?” Or they just quietly leave me to it. It is what it is, I’ve told them and the only way through it I think, is through it. They’re dealing with that pretty well but it gets complicated when I have a hot flash AND a grief flash at the same time. WOW that’s something to see. They’re getting used to that too, and glancing at each other with a “There she goes again” grin. At least I’m entertaining!

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Experts say that we are experiencing a form of collective grief during COVID-19; explained as a collective loss of normalcy. According to David Kessler, author and co-creator of the five stages of grief, we are experiencing a number of different griefs, including anticipatory grief. He defines anticipatory grief as "that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain." He says that we see this show up most often in our thoughts that we will lose someone we love, but he claims it can also include more broadly imagined futures, such as anticipating a literal or metaphorical storm. So how do we manage this collective grief? Understanding the stages of grief is a great place to start. The five stages of grief are:

• Denial: This virus won’t affect us.
• Anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities.
• Bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right?
• Sadness: I don’t know when this will end.
• Acceptance: This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.

Kessler says the stages aren’t linear, and therefore may not happen in this order. In addition, it's normal for us to bounce back and forth between stages, as grief is an ongoing journey that differs for each of us. What's most important for us to remember on this journey is to stop and take time to feel our feelings when grief (or any other emotion) bubbles up within us. Use the CALM process we explained in our May newsletter to help if you are feeling overwhelmed by emotions.

For more information on this process, listen to our most recent podcast here.