Handling grief is something that sooner or later we all must come to terms with.
As we mark the four-year anniversary of the COVID epidemic, many of us lost friends and loved ones and have had to come to terms with their passing.
Claire Bidwell Smith, LCPC is a therapist who specializes in dealing with grief.
The author of five books of nonfiction, her latest book, Conscious Grieving: A Transformative Approach to Healing from Loss, is especially poignant given how many friends and loved ones we may have lost in recent years to COVID.
Interview Excerpts – Conscious Grieving
JM – When did you start writing this book?
CBS – Just in the last couple of years. Yeah, I, um, I’ve seen a lot of changes since we went through the pandemic, a lot of new conversations around grief.
Obviously we all experienced grief and loss on such a huge scale. But I started to see how people were beginning to think about grief in a new way and recognize how much of it is with us throughout our lives.
JM – You mentioned COVID and it’s four years this week when everything kicked in with the lockdowns and everything. And I’m reminded of about the three weeks afterwards, the first friend I lost to COVID happened at the very end of the month of March in 2020.
He was 30 years old, in the prime of his life in excellent health. And that was, I think the first time I thought, boy, this thing may really, really be serious.
CBS – Yeah, that is so heartbreaking. I am so sorry.
Handling grief after losing a parent
JM – We each experience grief in different ways. About five years ago, in fact, it’ll be five this May, my mom passed away.
When that happened, I said to my kids, I’m not going to post this on social media. I said, this is how I’m going to deal with it.
You do what you want. My kids are far more active in social media than I am. So I didn’t tell them not to like you do what you need to do here.
But in reading your book, I’m wondering, was that me dealing with the loss of my mom, my own personal way of grieving? Or was I just delaying the whole process?
CBS – No, I think that was your own personal way of doing it. You know, I think that social media is a tricky thing when it comes to grief. We, some of us really want to talk openly and publicly about our losses. And others of us feel more private.
It’s not something we feel ready to share or kind of subject ourselves to commentary or opinions and, you know, experiences like that. I think that you were right in telling your kids, this is how I’m going to do it. You do it however you like.
We all, we all deal with grief in different ways. I think it’s natural to want to avoid it. It can feel so huge.
Your mother, that the person that you have been with since the day you came into the world, it’s a huge loss at any age. That’s a really big loss.
Sometimes I think we just aren’t sure how to hold that in our lives. And then sometimes people around us aren’t able to hold space for it either, and so we’re just not sure what to do with it.
So we do avoid it when we avoid it. It can often spill out and anxiety, irritability, anger, sadness. And so I think when we can make space for it and making space for it, you know, looks like doesn’t have to be posting on social media.
It can look like just spending some time thinking about her, maybe lighting a candle in the evening and just having a moment of reflection, talking about her with your family, writing about her, writing to her.
There’s so many ways to make space for our own grief.
Handling grief and anxiety
JM – You mentioned anxiety. And in fact, one of your previous books dealt with anxiety and grief. How were they intertwined?
CBS – Anxiety can often be the thing that spills out when we are suppressing our grief or avoiding it. But also we experienced anxiety after a big loss because our world changes so much.
We may be unsure of how we can expect to show up in our daily lives. I think that most people are really surprised by the enormity of emotion that comes with with a big loss.
And you may suddenly wonder, can I go to work today and, you know, not break down? Can I, you know, can I be with my family and not snap at people?
So often that anxiety will begin to surface of just not really being sure of our landscape now after someone is gone, not to mention we’re confronting our sense of mortality.
The year of “firsts”
JM – Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it is dealing with our own mortality. You and I lost our respective fathers at around the same age. I think you were 25. That’s the age that I was when I lost my dad and he passed away very young and you’re dealing with all of that.
You deal with those holidays and anniversaries that year of firsts and everyone goes through that. And you kind of mentioned this, you referred to it lighting a candle and things like that.
But you offer some very, very interesting ways to honor someone who has passed.
CBS – I do. I think, I think, you know, you’re right, those those days are so hard that year of firsts is so hard. The first time you want to call someone in can’t, you know, the first time you go through a birthday or a holiday that you always celebrated with them.
So again, taking that time to kind of make space around those events, I think is important.
Now, it’s also okay to want to close the blinds and just, you know, ignore the day, especially in the beginning, it can be really overwhelming.
But I think we can instate traditions that feel really good and healing to us.
Maybe you’re making your person’s favorite dish at a holiday gathering, or maybe you’re just setting out a photo of them at a wedding you’re attending or, you know, maybe you’re writing them a letter on a meaningful anniversary day and just acknowledging the relationship you had with them.
That relationship continues, you know, we have an internal relationship with the people we lose. It could be spiritual, it could just simply be internal.
But I think finding ways to honor that relationship and honor the time and the love we had with that person is really important.
The importance of laughter
CBS – We can hold multiple feelings when we’re grieving. We can hold joy and we can hold sorrow, anxiety, guilt, all kinds of things. There’s not just one feeling and one emotion.
Giving ourselves that permission to laugh, that can be a release too, you know, and it can remind us that we’re still here, that there is still life to live.
We can celebrate someone’s life. We can celebrate the time we had with them. Those things are so important. I think we see a lot of depictions on television and movies of what grief looks like that you’re, you know, shrouded in sorrow in a dark room.
Yes, there are absolutely periods of time like that. But then there’s also just our regular inherent personalities and life and celebrations.
Learn more about Claire Bidwell Smith on her website clairbidwellsmith.com.
