What is your loss through Covid-19?

We’re in lockdown. Like many others I'm joining many online groups (singing, book clubs) and I feel lucky that I have the broadband, the laptop, the basic skills to do that. I know many don't. A Twitter book club I've just taken part in (hosted by Robert Macfarlane @RobGMacfarlane, on Nan Shepherd's "The Living Mountain") has reminded me that I'm feeling three main losses: loss of freedom and personal choice (but for the greater good); loss of not being able to explore fully our natural world (although I'm lucky to live in a remote place with hills nearby); and loss of the myriad of ways that most of us physically interact with a variety of people each day and week. These are not the worst losses being experienced across the country at the moment. But I realise that my losses, however, small, are igniting many emotions.

Loss, even temporary, provokes loneliness and provokes or reignites grief.

I hope if you are feeling permanent loss, recent or further distant, you are able to find a way to live with any new losses now imposed on you. My current experience of grief triggered by my mother's recent suicide is certainly magnified - this fearful time reminds me of her - someone I have truly lost and who won’t be back for hugs and laughter together after the lockdown. But it does make me both grateful and yearning for those who will be back in my life – how sweet those hugs and moments will be.

While we physically isolate ourselves, there are so many ways we can miss being with and connecting with others:

1. We all probably take for granted even the smallest contact most of us have daily: the eye contact that is made without the seed of fear at “not-too-close” in the shop, or on the path. These contacts, "thin-ties", they are sometimes called by researchers - are still important in helping us to feel connected. I do love meeting new people - and I miss this a lot right now.
2. Then there is the lack of feeling part of a group (or social loneliness, if you're feeling this particularly harshly). Many of us are seeking ways to replicate this online. It is with my interests and activities that I miss this most but I also miss the freely given hugs to acquaintances or colleagues I don’t even know very well. Zoom and skype (or others) are great, but there is a warmth from being in a room with a variety of vibrant others - a feeling that only actually being in a room can provoke: the smiles, decisions, shared responsibility and learning, ability to work through difficult conversations with subtlety and care, and the physical sensation of sharing laughter with others in a room.
3. And although I am with my young family and partner, what I miss most of all are those others I am also close to in my life. I miss the sandwich of huge-hugs at beginning and end of seeing them, with the middle of quiet-still from my closest family and friends. This carefree and priceless *being* with long-term friends, family members and partners (who you don’t live with), who you can just be with. Silence in company. Company in silence. My eyes prick at thinking of a future, who-knows-when, reunion with them.

These are the losses I am feeling from my lack of connection. But I hope they will be temporary. And I hope yours are temporary too.

Sadly, after this is all over, there will still be isolated and potentially lonely people in the UK. There are 9 million people in the UK who feel lonely. 4 million of them older people. Over a million older people feel lonely some or all of the time (defined as chronic loneliness).

And each of them feel loneliness differently, just as my loneliness will be different to yours.

Because that is how loneliness is. It is different for us all. What we crave really depends on the source of our loneliness.

Whatever type of contact you miss, that, my friend, is what your heart is yearning for right now. This is what is making you feel lonely.

And this is the same for all of us, whether we are lonely through Covid-19, or at other times. And what you are missing, grieving for, must be taken into account when seeking contact.

And once we're out of this, we must remember that loneliness is personal. So addressing our need for connection, now and in the future, really needs us to ask and understand the personal situation and feelings of each and every person experiencing it.

And one trigger for loneliness is so often overlooked, and very hard to support during COV-19. Emotional loneliness is so often overlooked. In my freelance work, I’ve been doing some investigation recently with organisations who are focusing on emotional loneliness. And I fear that in this crisis that demands our isolation, and in the flurry of online groups, online learning and even phone calls (good as they can be) our emotional loneliness is also going to be overlooked.

We can’t truly resolve our loneliness arising from missing one special person – emotional loneliness, researchers call it – with being part of a group. It might cheer us up for a while, but what we’re yearning for is something else.

Some examples of projects focusing on emotional loneliness have been shared with me over the last few months. There aren’t many. I’m still searching for other examples.

After working on loneliness now for almost ten years, and even after recent acknowledgements that loneliness and isolation are major problems across the UK and the world, particularly now, I think there is still a huge opportunity to acknowledge that loneliness is not just missing being part of a group, it is not just about needing physical help – it can be about missing one special person, or special people, in your life.

How are you staving off, resolving, or living with, your emotional loneliness at the moment?

And do you know of any projects that work with emotional loneliness, in the longer term?

Post-script: Since writing this blog, I've noticed that in all the talk about how we're doing - I don't see much acknowledgement of the role of emotions in this at a leadership or strategic-level - except in this amazing blog by Julia Unwin: https://www.juliaunwin.com/emotions-empathy-and-what-it-means-for-us-now/)