This is a different version of the analogy that I more commonly heard about COVID grief, and wrote about in September 2020, week 25.

At times when my grief over my dad and stepdad were more at the surface, I haven’t wanted to interact with friends whose fathers are alive and in their life.

I’ve recently realized that this is analogous to how I am now feeling with friends whose pandemic behaviors are significantly deviating from ours. I, too, want to visit with family, go to restaurants for more than takeout, go on our 10th anniversary trip…and yet…we are making different choices in order to lower our risks and contribution to public health risks.

Most of the time I’m willing to make these choices, but sometimes I don’t want to hear about all ways other people are enjoying the things I am forgoing. It’s not just the loss of the things “before” – it’s also not having things that others still have.

With both grief and the pandemic, I’ve needed to create space in my work calendar for time off for family sickness and also time off for myself to process emotions (since I’m very effective at distracting myself from emotions with work).

In week 52, I also reflected that the start of the pandemic felt a bit like the shock after sudden loss, the sense of being unmoored and wanting reassurance. Feeling extra tired and yet this time, remembering to double down on self-care activities. I remember wanting to help others, knowing I had relevant training in public health ethics and pandemic resource allocation, and yet being barely able to get through the day. I remember the stress of trying to figure out how to keep Theo entertained while also trying to honor work commitments. All feelings that ultimately led to this weekly letter of solidarity.

In week 68, I noted that on the GriefCast podcast, there have been repeated analogies between the pandemic and grief. In some ways, this season of re-emerging (in July 2021) remind me of grief too: the period after big, intense, sudden loss, after the shock and then acute grief starts wearing off, where part of the brain thinks you “should be ok now”, and part of your brain is still full of grief.

For those of you to whom this analogy is inaccessible: I hear in the voices around me that reentry should feel amazing and exciting and a relief and everything should be improving. And yet. For many of us it’s exhausting, logistically complicated, confusing. The reduction in perception of acute danger can mean that unprocessed grief, trauma, or other emotions have space to emerge.

So, if any of you are feeling like, “why am I falling apart now when I made it through most of 2020 ok”, think about that sentence in a different light. Congrats on making to the place where it was ok to fall apart. I hope you’re getting the multiple layers of support you need to reconstruct yourself.