Reflections on Conversations about COVID-19 Collective Grief
By Sukhman Hehar
As the COVID-19 pandemic began changing our lives as we knew them, collectively as a society we experienced many forms of grief; a sense of loss that may be difficult to explain or understand from the immense change and shift in our way of living and from the ways we practice gathering together in community.
In Spring of 2021, CDLI worked with Alberta Health Services - Community Health Promotion Services and Calgary Alliance for the Common Good to develop the COVID-19 Grief Toolkit. The purpose behind creating the toolkit was to help support us to think, act, and change through the stories our grief stories; making them meaningful to us and our communities.
As a Master’s of Social Work student, I wanted to explore this toolkit as a part of my practicum because I was curious about how people thought about collective grief, I was interested to see how conversations could lead towards understanding diverse communities and how they grieve within their community. Thinking beyond how we grieve as individuals was challenging, since a level of vulnerability and trust is needed to share with our neighbours and community members to support one another and go beyond our personal grief journeys.
When I think about grief in community, I think about how much understanding of a specific community is needed to then be able to be a part of a collective grief experience; we must be able to accept that we may not be able to fully understand, but we do have the capacity to work towards having awareness and then advocate for meaningful interactions to occur. As a student and future social work practitioner, I think about the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) Code of Ethics principle of respect for the inherent dignity and worth of persons. This principle requires us to use cultural humility, critical self-reflection and radical acceptance of others to sincerely practice with care in our daily interactions.
CDLI believes in having conversations with community to increase a connection and build community. It was important for me to be able to understand and take the time to spend with community to see how I could further the teachings gained from the Toolkit. I interviewed three community members in the East Village area to discuss with them their experience of collective grief during COVID-19 and ways to process this grief. This blog post shares knowledge gained from my conversations with East Village community members and how grief has been experienced during the pandemic.
In our conversations, we touched upon four main themes: Belonging and social connection, isolation, learning, and coping skills which guides this post.
We talked about how everyone’s initial experiences were like during the beginning of COVID, with everything shutting down and one member not being able to leave their apartment building. One participant talked about how she used to interact with other seniors from the area on a daily basis and because of the lack of this, she needed to create a daily routine to maintain a sense of normalcy in her schedule. When I look at the grief toolkit, I can see how these are examples of ambiguous loss in our conversation, where it is difficult to pinpoint what the loss is and how we are feeling.
Here is a summary of the conversations that I had with the participants. How would you answer these questions in your own journey?
one community member shared opportunities to process this new type of feeling, a sense of grief, from an experience that is hard to put into words but is felt by everyone.
She expressed that it is important not to dwell on our feelings in this post-COVID era, but to move forward and create opportunities to build community. It is important to accept our emotions, to talk out the difficult feelings, but to also talk about things to avoid having COVID-19 overload. She talked about how people were getting tired of being indoors, stress was palatable, and how giving each other grace is important.
How do we create room to practice being in our community and neighborhood to ensure we are supported? I would challenge us to look at what wellness is for us. I shared a wellness plan that I created for myself that I would share with my community to be able to share in community. What does giving grace to others look like? How would we share our wellness ideas with each other, and allow us to have opportunities to process. What this looks like for me, is perhaps asking our circles to practice a breathing exercise together, such as the Bee Breathing Technique, when I notice there is palatable anxiety in a gathering. This requires moving at the speed of trust and building vulnerability in our interactions.
Perhaps we can take two steps back, and when we first gather, we can think about how we check-in with each other. Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee in her Decolonize workbook, discusses how we are quick to jump to the point in our meetings and gatherings, because it may seem unproductive to spend too much time checking-in with each other. I would like for us to challenge this notion. Having a safe-space and being able to accept everyone, however they choose to be present, is a powerful way to create and maintain a sense of community that supports belonging. This can be a transformative practice to allow for opportunities to process together when we invite people to share to make our community group space, a safer space, by navigating together.
Creativity and being Flexible
Another community member shared the importance of remaining upbeat and energetic when it can be easy to be negative about the constantly-changing policies around COVID-19, and see what we can do. For example, she shared as an organizer from Carya how creativity was needed to create and facilitate interactions with each other. There was a special program called Doorstep Dine-In that was created that helped bridge the gap between respecting physical distancing mandates, and also creating connection. In this program, participants were able to enjoy an activity of making food together in their own homes, and then talk about their experiences together afterwards.
Self-reflection moment…
Thinking about the importance of this, how can we apply this concept of creativity in our life? In the grief toolkit, we are invited to think about how we process our grief. Are we inclined towards practicing our grief through thinking more than we are feeling (instrumental), or are we more likely to share our emotions and feelings with others (intuitive)? I think it is important to practice self-reflection to ensure we know how we grieve so we can recognize the signs, even if it may be an ambiguous concept we are grieving that may feel unnecessary and unfamiliar.
“We’ve begun to endure being lonely and isolated. It has become quite natural for us to sit at home. We must deprogram our mind from what has been the norm for the last three years, and do with with empathy and consistency.”
During these conversations, I think about the importance of applying what we are learning into my interactions with people. At every interaction we have at CDLI we have a practice of reading a shared agreement. The main goal is to build a community space that is open to everyone, whatever level they are at, and give space to show up however they are.
In one conversation, a community member brought up some feelings and emotions that are difficult to understand and talk about. She shared how she has always been an avid volunteer and has always been there to support others, but during her experiences during COVID, she lost many friends because she needed their support and it was not given. Thinking about this, how can we hold space to acknowledge the difficult experiences that we encounter?
What can we do different next time to create opportunities to share collective grief? We can work to practice having a growth mindset, as shared in the COVID-19 Grief toolkit. We can practice this by recognizing the states of grief we may be feeling and how this affects and others around us and share our wellness plan together.
These conversations were inspired from the COVID-19 Grief Toolkit, in the hopes to share others’ experiences and wisdom from their stories. We invite you to share your experiences and how you express your grief during COVID-19 and share in our blog. Thank you to the participants that took their time out to have a conversation around collective grief and COVID-19.