Giving ourselves space to heal

The day Governor Inslee closed down the schools in Washington State was the last normal day I can recall. I was holding Alvin’s jacket as he was playing at the school playground. I wanted to leave, get home and start planning a solution to the crisis. I wanted to gain control to this unknown. I had to remind myself that I did not know the next time he would be allowed to play at the school playground.  So I started talking with a fellow parent. He was a fellow first line worker, a grocery clerk. He worked at night and slept during the day. He did not know what his days were going to look like now that the children were going to be doing remote learning, nor did I. That was the last normal day I can recall. I did not wear a mask or own one, I did not socially distanced.

On March 11, 2020 COVID was declared a pandemic. Alvin had stopped attending in person school and our society was seeped with fear.  As we cross over the one year mark, my body and mind are slowly decompressing all the emotions of the past year and yet they seem to be flooding back in all at once. I wonder how we are all doing. As the restrictions lighten up and the grips of confinement are loosened, how is our body releasing the emotions?

Recovery

After working 2-3 days, it takes another 3-4 days of being off before I feel like myself again. I am withered the first day off but eager to be outside in the fresh air. And allow my face to recover from wearing a mask twelve hours a day. The second day I attempt to blend into the family by cooking or helping with school work, but by mid-day, I need I nap. The third day, I finally wake up feeling rested, normal. I can exercise and be present with my family. The following day, back at work, the cycle starts all over again.

The last year has been rough, but the last two weeks have been really rough. The number of COVID cases at the hospital have dropped from 250 to 50 in less than a month. Things are getting better, the sun is out and Alvin started school this week. So why am I not getting better? Why am still drained, done, wiped out?

Survival

To survive I have distracted myself from the emotions. I am reminded of the peak of my postpartum depression in which I filled the days with task after task. Wake up, climb out of bed, shower, eat, dishes, nurse, play, laundry, bedtime, all detached. The days are carbon copies of each other. Every day I would move along, taking small steps until one day I started feeling again theses emotions that too many of us are now feeling. These emotions that are rising up, now that we can see the spark of light at the end of the tunnel. Happiness and relief are not waves crashing in, sweeping away the fear that has laid root in our communities, but rather a gentle knock at the door. A friend we are once again letting in.

We all have different stories from the last year and how it has affected us. We have different ways we have coped. For a couple of weeks, I went on a massive shopping sprees, only to return everything later. I needed to control something so I shopped.

What am I feeling…

But what are the feelings? Last week I started listing the emotions: lost, worried, guarded, hurting, scared, anxious, tired, overwhelmed (boiling over), drained, bored, disconnected, weeping, tense. After I had the list in hand, I sat with each one feeling it, pulling it from its roots. I cried, worried I would not be able to stop. With Alvin in the next room, I gathered myself and stopped, only to continue while I showered.  I grieved.

The year has been a loss, a literal one for many.  The loss of a family member, a job, a business, or the life we had planned. Without grief, we cannot mend and move forward. We need to give ourselves the space to grieve even though we have beauty lighting the way.  The angst of letting go of what you had hoped it would be and grabbing on to what is. Don’t get me wrong, I am still working on it every day.  Some days I am still decompressing from the emotions of being a frontline worker, but other days, I have the whole day in front of me with a lack of purpose. A replica of the day before, a decent life, so should I be grieving at all?

We actively state our gratitude nightly before dinner. Gary and I constantly remark that we could be in lockdown back home or in England, so why not have it in England? As Gary wisely says, we have made friend that have always been there, but we just didn’t know it until we moved. But now the emotions of moving during a pandemic are still fresh, and now the loneliness of being strangers in a new community are what I live with.

Reaching out, not alone

As we surpass the year mark, I am slowly learning to sit with these feelings. Feelings I have summed up as grief. If you look at the cycle of grief, you can say I am at the bargaining stage. I am reaching out to others, andI am very okay with it because it means that I, that we, are moving forward in the cycle, one tiny step at a time. And we are not alone.

The days will have purpose soon enough, and our “dream” life will not be in lockdown. But we still grieve for our previous life, and the people we miss back home, because without grief, we can’t embrace what is yet to come.  

Our silence about our grief serves no one. We can’t heal if we can’t grieve; we can’t forgive if we can’t grieve. We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend

Brene Brown

As the NYT opinion video “Inside a Covid I.C.U., Through a Nurse’s Eye” ended I was hanging on to her final words.  I was looking for wisdom, hope, faith all the things I have been lacking. But the only thing she said was a simple thank you.  I wanted to reach through the screen and tell her, I feel yeah too. The trauma of the loss is still too near to articulate all that has been endured. So we just have to stick together, acknowledge each other’s grief, and say thank you for being there.