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First let me preface this blog post by saying that I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, nor do I have any degrees or qualifications to give medical advice. If you are feeling symptoms of depression or have thoughts of harming yourself, please contact your primary care physician who can refer you to the appropriate health professional for help (or call 911).
Stages of Grief
We have officially completed week three of online learning, social distancing, and family quarantine. I can also officially say that I’ve mostly completed my journey through the seven stages of grief during these three weeks.
After the first week of our quarantine, I felt so much anger, sadness, and hopelessness (mainly anger). I yearned for someone or something to be held accountable for causing this mess. I was mad for the world, I was mad for our economy, I was mad that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, I was mad that I wasn’t going to get to watch my kid’s play their sports for another month (HA! What I would give now for it to only have been a month), I was mad that it was messing up THREE Disney trips that were planned for this year (seems so unbelievably trivial now), I was mad that I wasn’t going to get to watch Lila’s cheer team compete for the foreseeable future, I was mad because they had such a great chance at winning Summit and being crowned the best in the country at their level, and I was mad that I was having to postpone a wedding that we’ve looked forward to for months and months.
Early into the second week of quarantine, I kept seeing an article pop up on my social media news feed (I think I shared it on my page, or maybe I forgot to share it, but I wanted to!) about how this unsettled feeling that we are feeling right now is due to grief. I was like, “Grief?? But, no one that I know personally has died, how could I be feeling grief?” I never simply accept things that I read without diving in a little deeper (I love learning and any excuse for soaking up more knowledge-definitely a nerd at heart), so I began searching “stages of grief,” and it was very interesting to read about how similar the stages are to the range of emotions that I’ve felt over these last few weeks.
Instead of grieving the loss of a specific person, we are all grieving the loss of normal life, the life that we knew a mere 30 days ago.
Through my research on the stages of grief, I actually found several sources that describe seven stages versus the original five that I had previously known. I designed a pretty graphic for those of you who’d rather skip my boring anecdotes and simply catch the cliff notes 🙂
The second week of quarantine brought with it a flood of emotions, ranging from sadness, back to anger, to questioning the whys and hows, to frustration, and back to sadness. I think I literally cried every single one of those seven days. School closings kept getting extended almost every day, every day also seemed to bring even stricter restrictions on what we could and couldn’t do, businesses were closing their doors for good, trips were officially being cancelled, and we had to let our wedding guests know that the wedding was officially postponed, which made it real to me that it wasn’t going to happen in April (and probably not realistically in the calendar year of 2020).
I’m not even sure what the turning point was, but one day this past week (week 3), I seemed to wake up with a renewed sense of hope, and a much better attitude towards everything. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I stopped putting so much pressure on myself to keep the kid’s schooling perfect or stick to a strict schedule (I’ve never much liked a strict schedule anyways-I’d much prefer to go with the flow!), but the heaviness that I’d been feeling the two weeks prior started to lift. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still sad and angry for many things that this virus has taken from us and from so many people all over the world, but I finally have a calm sense that it’s going to be okay.
Focus on the Positives
I keep saying to focus on the positives, mainly so that I convince myself to keep focusing on the positives, but it is truly all that we can do to keep ourselves sane during this time.
Some positives for my family these past few weeks are:
- We have gotten to spend more relaxed, genuine quality time with the kids than we ever have in their 6-10 years of life.
- We have gotten a break from spending 1-2 hours in the car every day and have actually experienced 5-7 home-cooked meals per week.
- The kids have learned how to become a little more independent in their schoolwork and to learn to be accountable for the work that they turn into their teachers.
- They’ve had much more free time to explore the outdoors and to use imaginative play indoors and outdoors. It has been so much fun to see their creativity come to life with the games that they’ve made up, their artwork, the stories they’ve written, and the scenes that they create when playing with their siblings.
- I have tackled several personal projects that have been on the to-do list for way too long.
- I have finally been able to catch up on the professional development courses that I’ve had my eye on for months.
This whole mess is far from over, but please know that what you’re feeling is normal, justified, and temporary! Hang in there, lean on each other, learn a new skill or hobby, draw/read/create or do anything that makes you happy during this weird time of uncertainty, and try to focus on all of the positives (as hard as that can be sometimes!).
I cannot wait to hug all of your sweet baby’s necks when this is all said and done! I miss those precious faces so much!!
