Grief makes me feel even more isolated during the coronavirus pandemic. Am I normal?

Grief affects so many things. How has your sense of isolation or invisibility changed with the coronavirus pandemic? Are you normal if you suddenly feel even more alone than you already did?

Feeling even more alone and isolated than you did before COVID-19 is #perfectlynormal in grief.

Feeling even more alone and isolated than you did before COVID-19 is #perfectlynormal in grief. Grief is lonely during the best of times. This #coronavirus #pandemic is not the best of times. Whatever support you might have had has vanished as people turn inward to their own disasters. Nobody’s got emotional bandwidth to spare.

Well. Almost nobody. Grieving people know what it’s like to be lonely, even in a room full of people. Grieving people know what it’s like to feel like the odd one out, the forgotten person, the one people remember at major holidays but don’t think of on your everyday Tuesday. That sense of feeling left out or invisible tends to make grieving folks ferocious about supporting each other.

I’ve never met a kinder community than the community of grievers. When Matt died, I spent months looking for people like me. Jumping from one (then) obscure blog to the next, I found my people. That little family we built – spread all around the world – was what helped me survive.

It’s as true now as it was back then: Pandemic or no pandemic, companionship is how we survive. After death, after loss, after everyone else has moved along, the fellowship of other grievers remains.

If you’re feeling even more isolated in your grief (which is PERFECTLY NORMAL), please consider our social media channels (@refugeingnrief) your living room. Connect with other grievers in the comments. Tag your grieving friends and invite them in. Share our posts on your social media channels to let other grieving people know you’re out here.

A million little laptop lights at sea, friends. That’s how we survive.

Now, as always, the very best place I know to connect YOU with other grieving folks is inside the Writing Your Grief community. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there is always someone there: when you feel invisible inside your grief, these folks see you. When your friends have their own sh*t to deal with and you can’t lean on them, your WYG family is there. I mean it folks, this community is unlike any other place – online or IRL. The April session is open now and we’ve got room for you. Follow this link to join us, and pass it on.

How about you? How has your sense of aloneness or isolation changed with the pandemic? The more we talk about this stuff, the more we tell the truth about what grief is really like, the more people realize they’re not alone.

Grief is hard. It impacts every aspect of life, big and small. There are so many things grieving people experience, things they do or don’t do, that they (or the outside world) might think are unusual or weird, but are actually perfectly normal. You aren’t weird. You’re grieving.

Because it’s such a relief to find out we’re not alone, we’re creating a series of posts acknowledging as many of those things as we can, one #perfectlynormal thing at a time.

Want to share something with project #perfectlynormal?
Contribute here.

Submissions are anonymous. Share as many things as you like.

These posts were created using personal contributions people just like you and from our awesome Grief Revolution patrons. My patrons get to see everything we create before anyone else, suggest topics to cover in future projects, participate in live Q&A sessions, and more. Join the Grief Revolution at patreon.com/megandevine/