Today’s Living Thoughtfully post, comes from Linda.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember
that it’s going to be okay.
Thirty years ago, I delivered my stillborn son, Tommy. I can remember it like it was yesterday. At the time, I had a 2 ½ year old daughter and my pregnancy with Tommy had gone well, easily really, until it didn’t.
One day, while sitting with a client, I felt Tommy leave. I know that sounds kooky, but that was my experience. I recall saying to him, “where have you gone?” The next day I saw the doctor, and the following day I delivered his body.
It was an extraordinarily shocking and painful time. My world was rocked, and yet I had my sweet daughter who needed me to find my way through the fog and care for her, play with her, and laugh with her.
We’re experiencing a similar time in our collective lives and have been stunned by the change. One moment we’re heading into spring with graduations, trips, and tulips and the next we’re facing illness and death. And, we need to keep going for our families, our communities, and our world.
These are things that helped me then and are helping me now:
Grieve the loss.
We’re moving from shock to grief as we live through this pandemic—grief that the world is scary and unpredictable, grief that something invisible can create such havoc, and grief that we can’t be with some of the people we love when they are sick or even dying.
Grieving, while painful, is the way we integrate significant changes to what was our truth.
Find a way to live in a world forever changed.
Our world is forever changed by this pandemic experience, and we will learn how to live in this new world and shape its course.
Show up each day with your gifts and talents, your values and beliefs, and your love for your world. Let the best of you lead during this time.
Look for the gifts.
There are gifts in this scary time, and we are hearing them daily.
Families are connecting more regularly by phone and on face-to-face platforms; parents are home with their kids with time to read, play outside with chalk, and make cookies; workers are staying connected in new ways and feeling more alignment in their efforts than they did in their previous work.
There are gifts, but you will have to look for them over time. Over weeks, months, and years. It’s going to be OK, but it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be the same, and it’s not going to feel comfortable for some time.
because we will make it so.
We’ll grieve what we’ve lost, find new ways to live in this changed world, and we’ll grab the gifts that will unfold over time.
We’ll make it OK. We’ll likely make it better. And still, some days as we go through this madness, we’ll need to sit down and cry.