We, as Americans, are all afraid and angry, what a sad thing to bind us all together. We, as queers, immigrants, children of immigrants, people with disabilities, and people of color find this time terrifying. This encompasses the people who work at Pulse and those we care deeply about and serve.
The next few weeks will be hard no matter what happens. We will feel grief, fear, sadness, and maybe some relief. This is a time to find ways to lean on one another and find warmth in the heart of a good friend when it isn’t within ourselves. While we worry for our children, families and ourselves, as well as so many people around the world who need America to stand strong against tyranny happening in Gaza. You can know that love is still inherent in who we are as humans. We do have to look for it, find it, and then hold it in our bodies. Rosanne often sees a yellow dandelion growing out of the cold clay of the barren earth. This bright flower against the gray; a fence between the view and the flower. This vision looks like grief.
Grief is the barrenness alongside the beauty we need and want or feel we had and lost. This year is all that! Many have translated grief, loss, and longing into anxiety. Anxiety takes us away from feelings we need to experience. Anxiety takes us away from feelings we want to experience and fear. Soften, soothe, and allow.
When you are with friends, family, and lovers sit with the fear. Allow the sadness. Bring grief into your life now rather than push it away. Find what hurts and follow it through to where it is inside you. Instead of forcing feelings to be put in their respective boxes; poke holes in your box, peak out, and see that others are there with you. Find your yellow flower.
Allow yourself to rock back and forth in your body, in your mind, with your feelings. Note all the other feelings that are associated with grief – with sadness. Hopelessness, and despair along with relief, fear, love, oh so much love! We cannot grieve if we do not love.
As we sit with all that will happen over the next couple of months, use these ideas as a guidepost for ways to manage through the rest of the year.
Feelings of grief vary and can contradict themselves. Many people are surprised to learn that racing thoughts, brain fog, reckless behavior, irritability, exhaustion, and muscle tension are all connected to the experience of grieving. Identifying these more complex experiences of grief can be challenging, but beginning to understand how your system moves through grief can be a helpful blueprint for bringing care to your grief experience. The dual process model of grief asks us to allow the pendulation in our experience of grief. Permission to move between being grief-oriented and restoration-oriented. You might experience all of those listed symptoms in the span of an hour, a day, or a year. How can we meet these shifting feelings without judgment, but with compassion for our suffering and curiosity for learning how to support ourselves with care? Linked below you will find a worksheet for identifying your grief symptoms and brainstorming ways to help support yourself through these varied feelings. Use this tool on your own or in the support of someone you know moving through the complexity of grief.