A Week to Grieve

How are you?

It’s such a loaded question, how do you even begin to answer that at a time like this? I’m afraid that if I responded honestly it might take too long, and there would be tears. It’s hard, it’s been hard and I’m trying to be OK with that. I’m also trying to understand what’s going on, trying to make some sense of it all and to reset, to make plans, to create a strategy for what to do next. 

And to be completely honest, it’s all felt a bit futile lately. And sad. It’s hard to make plans when you’ve not yet made peace. I’ve lost so much, you have, we all have. I'm eternally optimistic but it just feels like this is a time for things to be a bit shit. A time to acknowledge what's actually going on, how we feel and what we've lost. I've been avoiding this. Perhaps this feeling I've been avoiding is grief. That big, heavy, grey elephant in the room casting a long shadow.

So, as a team of six, we called it out and each wrote a list of all the things we've lost. My first list was a bit superficial, it was just a list. The second attempt was more real, there were feelings attached – feelings I'd been avoiding. For me, it was about lost connections and lost meaning, losing the worth and validation that comes from connections with family, with friends, through interactions and routines, being seen and seeing others.

Yesterday we shared our lists with each other and more importantly, how we feel. It was surreal to be sharing something so personal and so raw through a computer screen. It only seemed to accentuate the fact we can’t do this in person, to hug each other or to offer a hand to hold. 

But it helped, it helped to share. More than that, it felt like we were all invited to witness something so vulnerable and precious, to witness each other's suffering – not fix it, but to simply witness it, to listen and acknowledge it. These ‘others’ are not just my work colleagues, these are my friends, life-long friends – some I’ve known for half my life and others I’m only beginning to get to know but all have become family very quickly.

This is our new way of working, and it feels like a relief. I wonder if this is how we all could be working now? Taking a moment out from trying to fix everything to simply honour what is.

Our circumstances are different but it became apparent that we all share something, something familiar, something so primal and human, something common. It is grief. And it is OK. We're all OK.

How are you? I'd love to listen...

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