​Lately, I’ve been having nightmares. The kind where I wake up sharply in the middle of the night and stare into the darkness, trying to discern what’s real. I pause for just a moment, feeling relieved that it’s only a dream.

And, then I remember. And that sinking feeling returns.

Because the reality is that many of us are experiencing multiple layers of Grief right now — individually and collectively. Loss of loved ones, loss of job, loss of security, loss of identity, loss of health and wellbeing, loss of connection, loss of a world that we thought we knew but maybe never was.

Simultaneously, new wounds trigger pre-existing ones. Childhood wounds. Family wounds. Generational wounds. Systemic and historical wounds that many of us had long before this crisis hit and that will continue to hurt long after this crisis ebbs, and another flows.

If you’re like me, you might be feeling emotional as hell. The mood swings feel like erratic yo-yos swinging from all directions. It’s exhausting.

​But that’s what Grief is.

If you’ve lost a loved one, you might be familiar with the Kübler-Ross Grief Model. Hospitals and grief counselors love handing out little pamphlets describing the five stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, or DABDA for short.

​The model was originated by the Swiss-American psychiatrist in the late 1960s as a tool to help patients with terminal illness make sense of their emotions as they moved through the painful process of reckoning with death.

Over the years, mental health professionals — including Kübler-Ross herself — have updated the model, adding more stages to validate a broader range of emotions when coping with any kind of loss.

Like all models, DABDA looks really nice on a chart. It gives us hope that we are just in a phase. Soon we’ll move onto the next one, and then the next… and if we follow the “normal” path of human emotion, there might even be a deeper level of meaning beyond Acceptance.

When my father was dying of pancreatic cancer, I was obsessed with DABDA — constantly checking my emotional state to see which stage I was in — then feeling worse about myself every time I reverted back to Anger.

But the thing is — Grief doesn’t alway follow a predictable cycle.

And the problem with models is that when our experience doesn’t fit the mold, we may feel self judgment and shame. “Not only do I feel like sh*t, but now I feel bad about feeling sh*tty because clearly, I should be over it by now.” That old chestnut.

And so long as we are paralyzed with self judgment, we aren’t feeling the underlying feeling that needs validation in order to move through it.

​In real life, Grief may feel like a wave. Or a spiral. 

Or it can feel like a jumbled mess of emotions that come, go, or stay, at any point in time. We may flip flop from Frustration to Sorrow to Joy, to Anger, to Gratitude — all in a matter of moments — and, that’s okay.

​And while some may call out Anticipatory Grief — the feeling of impending uncertainty or doom, and Vicarious Grief — the feeling of pain over another’s loss — those feelings are still Grief, and they are still valid. Labels can be helpful for some, and minimizing for others. In the end, it’s all Grief.

So here is the opportunity:

What if we reclaimed ourselves as the experts of our own healing journeys?

What if we got curious about our own (and others’) desire to bypass, numb, or shortcut the sh*tty feelings and move on, because we (and others) feel uncomfortable with feeling uncomfortable?

What if we acknowledged our right to just feel what we feel, and to have that be okay?

​Because even though my path may look different from yours, honoring our agency to create our own paths is what healing is all about. And that is one way that we can get through these difficult times — together.

By Amy Paulson
​​
May is one of my favorite months of the year.  Spring is in full bloom (hello, allergies) as bright pink, orange, and purple flowers flaunt their beauty, brightening up my garden and my day.

​Perhaps it is fitting then that May is Mental Health Awareness month (who wants to celebrate mental health during gray January?) - a time to raise awareness about living with mental illness, so we can break the silence and promote mental health and healing.

But, I’m gonna be honest: I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated that national conversations about mental health in America tend to only happen when they are linked to an episode of gun violence.  

I’m frustrated that the Netflix show, “13 Reasons Why” had so many opportunities to highlight the urgency of caring for our youth’s mental and emotional health - and they totally missed the mark by focusing on revenge and romanticizing suicide.

I’m frustrated that with umpteen million social media platforms promoting sharing and human connection, we are still stuck in a cycle of silence about mental health and well-being.  

And, frankly, I’m frustrated that we are still even calling it mental health and well-being.  

Because really, isn’t it human health and well-being?  

Thanks to science, we know that mental health affects not only our cognitive brain, but also our physical health, emotional health, and our connection to self, family, community, and the world.  

But when we reduce trauma, for example, to just a mental health issue, its causes and treatment get de-prioritized and de-funded like many other mental health issues in our schools, in the workplace, and in our health system.  When really, it should be treated like the community crisis that it is.  

Trauma is a symptom of family, of origin issues, violence, bullying, abuse, and systemic oppression and injustice.  Its causes and effects are deeply relational, impacting families, schools, workplaces, and communities.  Yet it can also lead to lack of focus in school, loss of economic productivity, and breakdown of civil society.  Left untreated, its effects are inherited by future generations.

But, before we can even start to tackle the problem of trauma or any other holistic human issue - we have to start talking about the hard stuff.  We have to be willing to share not just our selfie vacation porn, but also our real human-ness - our sadness, despair, fear, vulnerability, imperfections, and all the complex, emotional, messy shit as well.  And, it doesn’t have to be online.  It could even be, dare I say, in a real, live human conversation.

And, likewise, we have to respond to others with compassion and kindness and stop trying fix their problems or tritely say, “Don’t worry, it’ll get better...” - because when was the last time you actually felt better when someone said that to you?  Sometimes just having another person acknowledge our pain is all we need.  

So, next time someone reaches out to you in a time of need, try something like this:  “Thank you for sharing with me.  I’m so sorry you are feeling shitty.  I can really feel your pain and sadness.  I care about you, and I’m here for you if you need a hug, a shoulder, or someone to just listen.  You don’t have to go through this alone.”  

Bottom line: let’s be more vulnerable, and in doing so, create positive human connection and health.  Like any good facilitator, I will model it first.  Here I go:

My husband’s grandpa recently died.  During the funeral, while I was crying, I realized that my tears were awash with guilt and sadness over not spending enough time with my own grandparents when they were alive.  I didn’t ask them stories about their childhoods.  I didn’t ask my grandpa how hard the Depression was, or my grandma what it was like to be told she couldn’t go to college.  Instead, I was a self-absorbed teenager who cared more about whether my friends liked me than about spending time with my sassy grandma before the Alzheimer’s really took over.  Then, I felt bad that I was crying over my own stuff instead of supporting my husband through his grief.

So, that’s me.  Now, you go...