Our grief in the fog
As we witness the emergency politics and restructuring of global systems, a marathon is underway to fight a new war. It would appear many are busier than ever; families are struggling, organisations frantic as they seek to pivot, manufacturing plants are repurposing their factories, and our governments are rapidly mobilising social and health care services.
Beyond our emergency responses, the notion that we can continue to maintain a facade of business as usual — until it ends — continues to widen inequity and deepen societal grief. Our social and health care workers are experiencing trauma they will likely never recover from, many people are alone or in dangerous situations, families cut off from each other in their hour of need, and countless lives we have lost and still to lose across the globe.
The number of articles I’ve seen in the last month analysing government, tips on efficiency, prompts to not waste opportunities is utterly exhausting. Deflection of grief may be useful in emergency responses, but maintaining the facade elsewhere in life surely only serves to continue our heightened state, bury our trauma and slow the curve of recovery?
How do we stop and let the grief settle around us like a fog, one that can gently remind us that a new day will come, but not yet. We need ways as a global society and as local communities to immerse ourselves in the feelings that we all are holding so tight as individuals.
Many post-modern western societies moved grief from a collective experience to the individual and left each of us holding it like a wretched thing to cure. For some, the digital realm has reintroduced the expression of grieving in our community, particularly those of the internet era having intrinsically developed ways to express themselves via digital means — constructing and shaping their sense of self and self-expression.
While Indigenous cultures around the world have long held grief as something to be felt in the company of others, a unifying force to honour and make space for with no time stamp. What can be unlearned so as we open ourselves up to new (or indeed old) expressions of collective grief? How do we find multi-cultural, multi-modal ways to frame and experience grief as a collective, to slow down and discover a language for grief that is non-linear, without shame and needs not a ‘cure’.
Australia’s grief is raw; our reserves of resilience are being tested. The recent bushfires brought with them a profound loss of sacred land of Indigenous people and biodiversity that can never be replaced. People and their communities across Australia have scars they will always carry, and vivid memories of our own powerlessness in the face of weak government action which brought the effects of climate change to our doorstep and burnt it down around us.
COVID-19 is not a great leveller, the burden of ill health and safety is distributed unequally, no doubt more than ever we must find ways to address the inequality that continues to erode our society. From the disparities seen in the UK and US to First Nation’s intergenerational grief and loss, I am but a privileged spectator and we all must advocate for and support those who continue to reveal inequality’s presence.
My privilege cocoons me in layers of grief that feels unequal to the immense grief of others. With that acknowledgement, I know that in every part of society, we are each reaching for ways to express our ambiguous loss. Grief reminds us of personal fragility, our previous trauma and amplifies the experience. It inhabits many deep layers of our self; our memories, our values, identity, sense of safety, control, faith, our hope and image of our future. It continues to disrupt our social connections and our sense of place, whether it’s as simple as someone’s daily walk for the newspaper at 6 am each day for the last forty years or the inability to access ancestral lands.
Let us not turn inwards away from this grief, but outwards to recognise it as a uniting force that we must name. For it’s through this we claim it, validate it, find places for it to flow within us and settle amongst us as a connection.
Let’s reach out to friends, neighbours and strangers to support the naming of grief and strengthen our ties. It is only during this great slowing down, our connection to the community, our mind, our body — the inhabiting of the fog — that the true qualities of humanity will see us reemerge in a new dawn.
