A morning walk around suburbia
Grief is not a linear phenomenon, although so often in life we talk about it as if someone we knew once experienced it that way. “I don’t understand why they can’t just get over it and move on,” you’ve almost certainly heard someone say. Or maybe you’ve even said it yourself about someone you love who is struggling with a loss. Loss, too, is a nebulous thing that changes depending on who is experiencing it. In fact, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross outlines this in her landmark book on the topic of grief and loss, On Death and Dying, when she says, “The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.” And this doesn’t just apply to the loss of a person. Grief infiltrates so many experiences in our lives, and it often shows up when we least expect it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about grief, sadness, and the unique disappointment that comes when we expect things to go one way and instead they go in a completely different direction. I’ve been considering how these emotions can pop up when you least expect them, when you think everything is fine, and all of the sudden discover that it isn’t. This, for me, is 2020 in a nutshell. It is the grief of lost expectations. It’s not the loss of any one thing, but the loss of many things during a time that feels saturated with disappointment and struggle. It is a year that started like any other and has since morphed into a science-fiction alternate timeline where everything you thought you knew about the world and the people around you shifts. We are surrounded by and immersed in struggle every day, beginning with the slow descent into fear that has come with a global pandemic, the restriction of our daily routines where even the most simple acts feel stressful and overwhelming, moving as nation through a long-overdue national reckoning with racial injustice, wrapping our heads around the environmental destruction that comes with uninterrupted worldwide climate change, and living through what feels like the most important election cycle of our lifetimes. Just one of these events would be enough to fill an entire year, and here we are digesting the consequences of all of them at once.
It’s no surprise, then, that every little change that happens feels like a loss. I have been combatting this, sometimes successfully sometimes not, by establishing new routines for myself. Self-care comes in many forms, and for me it’s making lists, crossing off accomplishments, and exerting control over the things that I can actually change. Did I go for a walk with the dogs today? Did I wash my face in the morning and before bed? Have I meditated, mindfully breathed, for any amount time? It is more important than ever before that these small routines are a consistent part of my day. I use an app, called Streaks, to track my completion of these and other tasks so that it becomes useable data for future-Tim to review and reflect on. This visual, tactile approach works well for me. Writing-as-reflection, too, has been a way for me to process and organize the jumble of thoughts in my head. It’s a way to, as my dad would say when he wanted us to get outside as kids, “blow the stink off” my mental process in this upside down time.
When anger, frustration, anxiety, distrust, and a loss of control are an ever-present fog for so many of us, recognizing and reflecting on what we can and cannot control can be a major jumping off point for personal wellness. Some days I’m better at it than others. Some days I’m able to shut out the echo chamber of division and derision that seems to pop up at every corner. It turns out that I actually can survive without refreshing Twitter at five minute intervals, without reading the news ten times a day. It turns out that a world without constant connection to the external and a connection rooted instead toward the internal can actually make a difference. I can shift my expectations for myself and the world while still grieving for what I hoped would be. I know that I’ll continue in a cycle of success and failures, and that’s OK. On the days that I fail, I’ll try to have the grace to forgive myself, take a breath, and start again. Maybe you’ll do the same.
Push through that fog