On weekday evenings, sisters Lesley Laine and Lisa Ingle stage online happy hours from the Southern California home they share. It’s something they’ve been enjoying with local and faraway friends during this period of social distancing and self-isolation. And on a recent evening, I shared a toast with them.
We laughed and had fun during our half-hour Facetime meetup. But unlike our pre-pandemic visits, we now worried out loud about a lot of things – like our millennial-aged kids: their health and jobs. And what about the fragile elders, the economy? Will life ever return to “normal?”
“It feels like a free-fall,” says Francis Weller, a Santa Rosa, Calif., psychotherapist. “What we once held as solid is no longer something we can rely upon.”
The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe has not only left many anxious about life and death issues, it’s also left people struggling with a host of less obvious, existential losses as they heed stay-home warnings and wonder how bad all of this is going to get.
To weather these uncertain times, it’s important to acknowledge and grieve lost routines, social connections, family structures and our sense of security — and then create new ways to move forward — says interfaith chaplain and trauma counselor, Terri Daniel.
Continue reading: Coronavirus Has Upended Our World. It’s OK To Grieve