Tidal-Wave

It hit me like a Tidal-Wave! Which actually makes sense, but I wasn’t ready for it. I’m talking about my grief. It is the last week of school and my girls and I sat and watched the videos that were made by teachers and staff. And then it hit--crashing down on me unexpectedly, pushing me to the shore, confused and shocked about what just happened, then I stumbled at the shoreline and cried a bit.

Now, interestingly enough, I talk about grief often in my practice, I refer to it as waves in an ocean. If you can imagine a wave, it’s that part that starts building up before it crashes back to the water, inside that part is where I consider our grief to reside. It’s often the pain, hurt, sadness, anger, confusion and a whole bunch of other emotions that comes with our mourning. I think of grief as a “funny” experience, not in a HAHA kind of funny but in a confusing way. It is an experience where we can truly feel sadness and then simultaneously start laughing. It can leave you feeling so confused on why you’re laughing when you’re supposed to be sad and crying.

For me, I encourage individuals to feel all the emotions that stem from our mourning. We grieve because of a loss and it's not just in a loss of death, it’s a loss when things change in our lives or maybe in the world. Now, not all losses in our lives cause a tidal-wave effect. However, when we do have a bigger wave that hits us, we can probably expect some stronger waves coming shortly after it. Some losses we experience can look like those smaller waves in the ocean, you know, the ones that cause a gentle push against you, but your feet are solid in the sand. Whatever the wave, I always encourage people to dive into it and not to just ride it. As we take that dive, it’s my hope that by the time we reach the shore, we sway with the caress of the wave, almost creating a relaxing and soothing touch as we settle in from our loss. Those calmer waters bring more of a stable feeling versus getting “rocked” by a massive unexpected wave which of course does happen in life.

So, thinking about this a bit, I was probably being a little dramatic saying I was hit by a tidal-wave, so it wasn’t a tidal-wave but it definitely “rocked” me a little. I wasn’t grieving because I now have a 3rd grader and a pre-k kiddo. I am actually really excited for my girls. So, there it is…that moment when you can be excited and crying at the same time. I was grieving thinking about everything they missed out on by not being a school. I believe school is absolutely critical in every way of their development. Watching these videos and seeing them smiling with their classmates, working together on projects, playing, learning, exploring and building meaningful connections with others, all of this is so important. As much as I took on this home school teacher role, I can never do what they get in school. So, I have hope that our community starts the next school year with some normalcy. I also know that these experiences I shared aren’t always what students feel. So maybe this change created a different type of wave for them.

I think for me, I have been too busy with all of my life changes to slow down and think about the impacts so that’s why it hit me unexpectedly. I was definitely aware of the changes, but to feel them--well that’s different. Sometimes it’s hard to feel all the emotions or any emotions at all when you’re just trying to survive what’s happened.

This pandemic, in my perspective, has been full of loss and grief. Our lives in a lot of ways have changed, which again can be a mixture of emotions. I know I loved my family time, but I missed watching my kids play soccer, riding horses, seeing friends, and enjoying family gatherings. I missed HUGS! And I totally miss unessential shopping. I miss seeing my clients in the office. There are countless things as I reflect that I miss, which I'm sure you can relate to.

Just because COVID happened and the world felt like it stopped, our lives however, kept going. The reality is there are bigger waves happening. People are grieving deaths of family and friends, losses of jobs and financial security. Changes in how we celebrate significant milestones in our life, weddings, childbirth, graduations, birthdays, our “rites of passage”. We grieve our relationships and connections to others. Sometimes we can find ourselves grieving even what we don’t have, so there might be exacerbated feelings of loneliness and separation. Awareness that rises of our true reality of our family dynamic. Or just maybe wanting some alone time because we've been confined with the people in our lives.

Oftentimes when talking about grief, we also want closure. So, I talk about closure like this…what is closure for us? It’s often not wrapped up in a pretty little box with a nice bow on top that we can put away somewhere. It sometimes can be a bit more messy or fragmented, without a timeline. So when someone says something like…”you should be over that by now, move on”, it doesn’t really happen that way. I think grief is always a part of us, something that we constantly try to move forward with, knowing that memories will remind us of our life change or loss. So it’s not to get over, it's to embrace, it’s to accept and it’s to find meaning in that will help us move forward in a time of change.

I see examples of this healing happening everywhere, through any celebration parade, zoom call, yard sign, community support, donation, school videos, social media, etc. It’s my hope, that if you are grieving, whatever size the wave, that you dive into it and come to the shore feeling more settled and in control of your ride.

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