Making Space for Grief

By: Dr. Denise Renye

The other week an article circulated stating the disenfranchised feeling that you’re feeling and potentially can’t name is grief. Right now, we’re living in a unique time where we’re collectively experiencing this emotion. Grief at not being able to hug friends or touch lovers. Grief that we cannot be with family. Grief that we can’t distract ourselves the way we normally did before this pandemic as businesses are closed and we’re instructed to stay at home.

It’s interesting to notice that no matter how privileged a person is, which usually at least partially inoculates them from difficulties, everyone is being impacted by COVID-19.* Maybe it’s in a lack of supplies or a lack of physical touch. Maybe it’s canceling a wedding or special event. It could also be in the loss of a loved one. All of us though, are grieving. It can be hard to sit with, to process a loss of this magnitude, especially when none of us really know when this pandemic will be over. We have information from other countries in regards to the trajectory of this virus, but generally we cannot be certain of a return to “normal”…or even what the new normal may be. This uncertainty can create grief.

When there is a death of a person, there is a ritual marking the end of the life such as a funeral. There is a gathering with loved ones that serves as a container for this unwieldy and often avoided internal experience of grief. It is a visceral experience that can sometimes (if permitted to feel fully) include retching of the body, loud wailing, and uncontrollable tears. Currently, we don’t have a collective container to process all that is going on in our internal landscapes. Social media could arguably be such a container, depending on the quality of your connections online. Because we are not are not gathering together in groups to process and we don’t know when this will end, many people have been leaning more heavily into their social media contacts.

I want to acknowledge that this experience can be challenging and to let you know I’m here in grief with you. I’m not trying to fix, control, or cure anyone. I’m here to witness and hold space for myself and others to come back to wholeness. There is a great invitation that comes with crisis and tragedy. This invitation is to welcome in the full expression of emotions, and that includes grief, which unlike other emotions, often lingers and shows up at unexpected times. In non-COVID-19 times, it jolts us when we hear a certain song or perhaps approach a certain date. The grief we feel from COVID-19 will be with us for a long time because even after we’ve gotten through this pandemic, we’ll still remember this period. There is grief along the way and there will be grief when we are on the other side. And even if we try to push it from our mind, our bodies will remember and store this grief because that’s what bodies do.

Grief does not know time. And it could be considered an unasked for gift to embrace more of a yin, or feminine, energy. The yin energy is one that creates space, turns inward, and is powerful in its receptivity. This is very different from most societies’ typical ways of operating, which are more yang and externally driven, marked by businesses and productivity. Grief can lie dormant and then resurface when a new loss arises. For instance, if there are unprocessed feelings about the death of a loved one (no matter how long ago), reading or hearing about deaths from COVID-19 can resurrect these feelings. It can leave us feeling alone, confused, and alienated, especially when we are instructed to reduce our in-person time with others to zero. It can also, however, provide a gift of spaciousness to process more deeply and come to a sense of peace within. An important step in this is identifying the experience as grief, while understanding the complex feelings within may span a broad range.

Many who I work with in my practice and my classes have experienced a body response to having their grief labeled. Once we can label emotions and feelings, they often morph with time.  By labeling, our cognitive capacities can work together with our somatic (body-oriented) capacities. If it is indeed grief you are experiencing, you may notice a full body relaxation upon labeling it.

From a Chinese medicine perspective, the lungs are often associated with grief and sadness. According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) system, this is where we hold grief and isn’t it interesting this virus is specifically attacks the lungs? It makes me wonder if on a collective level we’re not processing our grief, and perhaps as it relates to the planet.

According to Emma Suttie, an acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, and founder and editor of Chinese Medicine Living, everything is seen to exist within the continuous cycle of nature. “Humanity cannot be separated from nature, we are nature, manifest as people,” she writes. It’s a philosophy I agree with, and wrote about in this post. I believe what happens on the planet is not an “out there” outside-of-ourselves issue. It is not a foreign experience from which we are separate. We are not separate from this Earth. “It” is us and we are it. We are intimately entwined with the Earth on which we play, work, love and live.

Suttie goes on to say, “Living in harmony with the world around us is the way to maintain health. If one were to live out of balance with nature, illness would develop.” I keep thinking about that last line, how if we live out of balance with nature, illness develops. We as a society have been living out of balance with nature for generations now. Last year fires raged in the Amazon, which are often called the “lungs of the planet,” so land could be cleared for cattle grazing. We’re using the environment over and over again for our selfish gains and not taking into account the impact it has. The grief that goes along with destruction is going unrecognized.  

Is this an avenue for us to cry collectively? To grieve our mistreatment of the planet? To feel the fire in our lungs that nature also felt when we burned the “lungs of the planet?” We are all connected to each other not only as people but the planet itself. What we do to the planet affects us. The Earth is “grieving” and we are too. Now is the time to collectively make space for that grief.

To learn more about grief and how to work with grief, feel free to reach out.

*People with status and/or resources seem to be addressed more quickly than those who do not have either.

Resources

Berinato, S. (2020). That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. Harvard Business Review.

Renye, D. (2019). Psychotherapy for Climate Change: How Our Own Inner Healing Helps the Earth’s Crisis. Whole Person Psychology. (online)

Suttie, E. (unknown date). Grief and the Lungs. Chinese Medicine Living (online)