Living through Loss by Stephanie Glenn
Living through loss....little did we know when we began researching life losses that just months later we would be living through a global pandemic and counting our own losses.
A group of us in Houston began researching loss across the life span about eight months ago. We poured through scholarly journal articles, academic textbooks, religious writings, listened to podcasts, made notes of everyday stories of loss and reflected on our own loss experiences. Our team began using this information to record not only patterns in loss experiences, but also common ways of coping and even healing after these losses in life.
Early on in our work, I realized that the things we usually name as a loss such as job loss, loss of health, loss of a loved one through death, and others, actually serve as triggers for more rudimentary losses that are common to us all. We call these core or primal losses and they include loss of control, loss of identity, loss of financial stability, loss of relationship, etc. We have honed this list to include 12 core losses that may be triggered by a loss experience.
I was on a trip with my family during Spring Break when I received news that the Houston rodeo had been cancelled. I haven’t called myself a Houstonian for that long, but even for someone like me who has only lived in Houston a short time, knows that the Houston rodeo is iconic. It is the largest indoor livestock exhibition and rodeo in the world and to cancel it signals that something must be terribly wrong. From that point on, I was glued to the news reports both locally and internationally related to this novel coronavirus, infamously now known as COVID-19. The scientist in me went on high alert with an insatiable desire to know all the technicalities. What do we know about this virus thus far? How is it spread? What should I do now?
As my family and I were traveling back home to Houston, we received texts from friends that the grocery stores were running out of supplies, especially things like toilet paper, bleach, eggs, meats and more. My mind flashed to “Harvey”. We had lived through this category four hurricane that made landfall in Texas and Louisiana in August 2017 causing catastrophic flooding and many deaths. We were homebound for seven days, the grocery stores were empty, and flooding was all around us. It seems dramatic now, but at the time, we actually faced the reality that we might die the night that seven tornadoes were reported near our home. I thought, I can’t “do” another disaster.
By the time we returned to Houston, the grocery stores had implemented a better system of stocking their shelves and limiting purchases of the most sought after items. While we still haven’t been able to purchase toilet paper, we have been able to buy most of the foods we would want. I am grateful for that because I am aware that this may not always be the case as the virus continues to spread throughout our community.
“Uncertainty” was the phrase that most people were using my first week back home from our trip. Each day a “new normal” was introduced even though my brain was not able to accept it as “normal” yet. Schools were cancelled and children were asked to homeschool. People began to question the stability of their jobs and the lucky ones moved to remotely working at home.
Our research and development team moved our gatherings to a daily Zoom meeting at 2pm. Before we logged on for the first time, I thought about the “core loss list” we had compiled months prior. What core losses of my own have been triggered by the global pandemic of COVID-19? Maybe I should do a self-assessment before I joined our online discussion. I soberly pulled up the list in our shared Google Drive and slowly read through the losses. Loss of safety, loss of health (a real possibility!), loss of control, loss of connection, loss of independence, loss of livelihood or income, and loss of hope for plans, dreams and future. I counted them up: six core losses at the moment and a real threat for at least one more i.e. loss of health.
As a medical professional I am keenly aware of the importance of appropriate diagnosis before effective treatments can be given. A life experience such as a world pandemic and all the ramifications that ensue is not the real loss. The spread of COVID-19 has triggered several core losses personally. Now that I’m identifying my losses and the related needs, I can get on with an appropriate response. (More on that in a later blog post.)
This is what “Living through Loss” is all about. It’s not a time to ignore or try to avoid the pain of loss. That will just lead to more suffering. We want to illuminate the path for healing and offer useful tools to help facilitate wholeness in the midst of life losses. We can fully live through our losses and even in the midst of our losses.
Look for more to come from our team at www.mediaunwrapped.com