March Again

by Michelle Read DeGarmo

So it’s March again. Or still. Is everyone else exhausted too, or is it just me?

Anniversaries of traumatic events are tough. When I was training to be a Death Doula, we talked a lot about anniversary grief. The one year mark of a death is a time to honor our dead person and sift through our memories about the death. It can be a time of peaceful introspection or a hellscape of anxiety, and it’s perfectly normal for it to be a mix of both.

In March 2020 the world split irrevocably into two parts – before and after. We aren’t going back to the before times. No matter who we elect, how many of us get vaccinated, or what the economy does. We’re only going forward with the knowledge that something terrible has happened that affected every single one of us.

I remember waking up every day with a deep sense of both fear and apathy. The act of forcing myself to believe that something – anything – mattered was in itself exhausting. This was my brain adjusting itself to the tsunami of cortisol and adrenaline that accompanies a crisis. The thing is, this crisis wasn’t as simple or short lived as a car accident or a leopard in the tall grass. Our brain’s complex system of protecting our dumb asses in a crisis ended up hurting us more than it helped. This time, the leopard really was in the tall grass, and it’s not leaving anytime soon. We have no choice but to adapt to our surroundings, so like many of our ancestors before us we’re experiencing how trauma rewires our brains. It’s unpleasant.

Exercise, eating real food, meditation, social interaction (even on Zoom), hobbies, work, and down time for our tired brains all help this process. All of this can smooth the rough edges of a horrible experience, just like it does when we’re grieving a person, but it can’t change the fact that grief is uncomfortable on it’s best day. Grief physically hurts us. And we are all grieving right now.

The whole world is grieving the future ripped away from us so quickly that will never be quite the same. We’re grieving our dead people, our collective poor choices and those of our leaders, and the ways in which our society has changed. Perhaps it’s changed for the better, and still even good change is disconcerting. Grief in a culture that’s death-illiterate and has never been taught how to grieve is difficult. This year has been an incredible challenge for us.

For those of us with the incredible good luck to not lose our jobs or our people, it may seem disingenuous to still feel this grief. It’s not, so please let yourself off the hook for any of that misplaced guilt. We all lost something. Our sense of wellbeing, the peace of mind that comes from being many generations removed from this kind of trauma. We were gaslighted by our leaders and watched half the country deny that a global pandemic was real. Whenever I am faced with a COVID denier, while I gave up so much to flatten the curve, the rage I feel is overwhelming. I’m probably not the only one.

So if you’re feeling big emotions that don’t make sense in the context of where we are right now, it’s probably COVID grief. Processing trauma takes a long, long time, and we’re still in the middle of the crisis. This is what the anniversary of a death looks like. You’re not losing your mind, I promise. We’re grieving in community.