Thoughts on Grief

I've been thinking a lot about grief lately.

This year has brought profound collective grief -- from the nearly 300,000 lives lost to COVID to grieving the loss of togetherness and things like birthday dinners and graduations. Grieving of the way we're used to things being.

I've been thinking about how this new grief and sense of loss can be so triggering to those of us who have known profound loss. Those of who intimately know the depths of grief.

I have been triggered by that often this year -- feeling the looming grief and being simultaneously scared of it's dark wave, fearing being swallowed by it.

But we've also had to find new ways of coping with our grief.

I have always navigated my grief with togetherness. Shared laughs and tears over a meal or a drink. Sitting together, feeling together, grieving together. Grief has somehow always been a connecting point to emotional intimacy for me.

But that's gone now. We've had to learn to grieve alone or through a screen -- without a hug or physical presence.

I have underestimated the magnitude of that as I've lived it.

I lost two significant people in my life since March. And there have been no in-person celebrations of life or opportunities for communal grieving. Rather I've been left to make sense of it all alone, and through Zoom or FaceTime.

I don't know that we'll know the impact of any of that for quite some time..

But I do know that as we reflect on all that 2020 has been, I hope we'll honor how we've moved through grief. How we've been challenged, but also how we've risen from the depths of ourselves and our grief to continue on.

I know that I'm proud and grateful for surviving all of it. For being able to feel it all without becoming it.

I hope you are too.

And to those who are grieving in this season -- I see you. I love you. And I hold you in my heart.

We'll get through.