Heal the Grief – Part 2

If we were to be hit by an asteroid in two weeks, if the Earth were to be plunged in an new ice age, how would we prepare? If we had warning, what would we plan to do? What would be important to us then? The same things as now. Spending time with our families, more of them though, not isolated the way we are, spending time with friends, telling each and every person how much they mean to us, being clear about how we feel, and not putting on a face to pretend that we want to spend time with people that we clearly don’t.

If we needed to survive a new ice age, we would need to learn how to exist without a lot of the infrastructures we currently rely on. We would go back to the methods our forefathers used before us, preparing for the long term, relying less and less on the world wide availability of products and returning to a local economy and market, no longer tied to an international global shopping mall. Reducing our impact on the world as a whole will help us to maintain enough land to grow crops locally. Keeping our forests means heat when infrastructures begin to fail. Clean water means we all live a better, longer life. And it took a pandemic to make us all realize that we have been living beyond our local and regional areas, despite our need to be close to those we love, spreading out to cover areas that were never meant to be impacted.

Underlying the emotional layers we are processing right now is one we do not often face day after day. Collectively, we are grieving. It could be grief over the loss of a friend or family member, a pet, or a neighbour. It may be someone you never met, but they are associated to someone you know.
The globel world means we will all know someone who knows someone who’s life has been taken by this virus. There are no degrees of separation any more. Every day, we adjust and flow with the emotions that are building up within each of us, building up within our homes. And when we know what emotion we are feeling, we can deal with it. What I had not determined was that there was a pervasive level of grief slowly building within me, slowly filling my emotional pool with sorrow, loss, and regret. It was a message from my guides that lit the candle, throwing light on the deepening pool, showing grief for what it was. The illumination allowed me to accept what I was feeling and why. And with the why, comes comfort and release.

In processing grief, we all go through stages. These have been documented over and over, but I will list them just to go through them in order.
1. Shock/Denial
2. Pain/Guilt
3. Anger/Bargaining
4. Depression/Reflection/Loneliness
5. The Upward Turn
6. Acceptance & Hope
7. Reconstruction/Working through

Shock and denial. I know I was sure there when the first announcements were made about how serious this pandemic had become, and what the potential outcome could be. We live in the technological age that means we are all interconnected, level after level after level. The internet brings us information faster than we can ask for it, some of it real, much of it fake, often information becomes mis-information before we can even properly process it. It is going to affect every one on the planet, all 8 billion of us. The affect will vary from being mildly sick, or not at all, to being on death’s door or past it. Whether we get it, share it, beat it, or lose the fight, we are all going to feel the devastation this virus is capable of inflicting on the people of this planet. And even if we feel only a mild inconvenience on a personal level, we will all lose someone we know during this time of isolation. And there is no way to know who it might be. We have borne witness to the methods used in other countries to try to mitigate the effects, to hold on to as many people as they can, but it has meant the adaptation to choosing life or death for many who can not make the choice for themselves. The agony of the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, all of whom have taken an oath to protect the sanctity of human life, do all within their power to keep us feeble humans alive, even after the ravages of a long-lived life have made it a struggle. Advances in medicine and medical practices have extended the lifeline of many people on all continents. In the early years of civilization, humans rarely lived beyond their fifties, succumbing to the illnesses and disease that humans had not yet developed immunity to or skills to reverse. People simply did not have a chance to live once cancer took a hold, a stroke ravaged their body, or a heart attack stopped the most vital act in maintaining life. We, as a species, have learned to cheat death over and over again, finding new and better ways to extend our lives, being able to live and share our knowledge to generations that would otherwise have been lost. But with this extension on our lifeline, we have lost the importance that was attached to the loss of our elders.

Civilization has gone from venerating our elders to shunting them off to live in collectives of their own, often ignored or forgotten until that last day, until that phone call saying there is nothing more that can be done. Once it is too late, we feel the regret that comes from the missed opportunities, the missed occasions when a simple visit could have meant so much to both parties. But we live forever – don’t we?? “If tomorrow never comes”. This phrase now means so much more. In our current world, we simply cannot put off until tomorrow. Not any longer. If we have words that need to be spoken, say them. If there are wrongs that need to be righted, fix them. If there are events that need to be forgiven, let them go. There is no importance to the past, unless there is a lesson to be learned from it.

How many can honestly say that they remember the teachings of their grandparents? In this day and age, there will be few. Because we don’t ask the questions any more. Google has all of the answers, right? Want to know how to change a light bulb? Want to bake a loaf of bread? How about preserving all of the vegetables you are suddenly compelled to grow? The best teachers of lessons like these are our elders. Maybe you never had the opportunity to know your grandparents. Maybe your parents never taught you things like this because they never learned. Maybe you can be the parent for your children that gives them life lessons like these that would otherwise be overlooked.

We look at self isolation as deprivation. It should instead be a time to grow and to share what we know with those who are eager to learn. We need to become the elders. We need to gather the information to share to the next generation and those to come because their is no guarantee that Google and all of the rest of the online resources we take for granted will still be there when we need them.

And our elders are not necessarily those we have in our immediate family. Any person who has lived a full life has much to share. In this time of upheaval, these are the people who can shed light on how to ration for an extended period of isolation. In times of financial hardship, these are the people who know how to stretch a dollar, to make every penny count. They have lived through the times of need and the times of plenty. For those only accustomed to the plentiful times, doing without is a scary prospect. Not having access to their favourite ice cream or that hot cup of coffee can be unnerving, especially coupled with the uncertainty of not knowing when the world will right itself.

We are entering a time of precariousness. When people who have not faced deprivation suddenly lose their perspective about how to function without. Those who have had lack in their lives may be faced with having even less. This is not ideal either, but they are in essence more prepared then those who have always used their money to make everything all right.

Denial keeps people from panicking. If they don’t have to believe that the world is changing around them, they can continue to live with their rose coloured glasses on and that all will be right again, if only they could just wake up. Wake up and find out this was all a dream. Not going to happen. Unless we are all in a collective nightmare, influenced by a global reset button being pressed by some omnipotent being tired of us being selfish, self-centred, wasteful brats who have lost their connection to each other, to their communities, to their country, and to their planet, the very thing that allows them to live in the first place. All the talk about taking care of Mother Earth, about changing the way we interact with it, about changing the impact we have made on the very life sustaining systems we rely on – nothing but hot air until now. The very visible impact this pandemic is making on global pollution is a wake up call to say – yes, we can make a difference, yes we can do better, yes we need to take care of this planet. We cannot ignore the damage we have all done, only move forward with the understanding that the Earth will right itself. If we do not heed the warning signs, if we do not do better, Mother Earth will take us out. Survival of the fittest is a real thing. How fit are we as a species? What can we endure and will the human race still be here when the dust settles?

#healthegrief

Written by mysticdd-admin