The thing with grief is when we experience any kind of loss, whether it’s a normative loss, unexpected developmental loss, or a traumatic type of loss, which the pandemic has been created, this elective type of grief where we across the world globally, we’re all experiencing these intense types of grief reactions, and those grief reactions really look different for each of us. They’re like a fingerprint, right? And so much of it is based on our past experiences, what we’ve learned, and how we’ve learned to be able to respond. That comes from our family, that comes from society, cultural, spiritual, familial types of rituals and practices and beliefs. The intersection of all those really come into play. But anytime we go through our life course and we experience some type of loss, it brings up all those previous losses, and it’s just the nature of grief. The good thing is that as we move through the life course, our narrative changes based on our experience.

Being able to come in for treatment, being able to gain insight, gain new tools to help them with adjusting and coping and weathering. The storm is very normal for whatever has happened in the past to come up when you’re experiencing grief. It’s just what happens. It’s part of the process. Part of what we do as therapists is help them to tap into what are those rituals? What are those customs? What are those things that you did, that you’ve learned that are helpful, that you can bring into the present to help you with that adjustment and adaptation in the current loss that you’re processing.