Member-only story
Avoiding rupture
As a nursing student — back when dinosaurs roamed the earth — even we learned about Kubler-Ross and the five stages of grief. The leap I have failed to make in 25+ years of nursing is this: not just individuals grieve in this manner. Families grieve, communities grieve, countries grieve, and now thanks to COVID — The World is grieving
Each of these units — made up of individual souls — bring their own twist to the grieving process.
In my family of origin — grieving was not something shared. We grieved by not talking about the elephant in the room. Conversations rotated around this central tenet — We can’t let her know she’s dying. So we didn’t. And my mother, good sport that she was, never disavowed us of our beliefs.
I live in North Carolina. As I type this Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isiasis is barreling toward our coastline. I have friends in those communities who have weathered their share of Nature’s fury. Communities who mourn together and grieve their losses and rebuild just to do it all over again. And again. And again.
Refugees. What would our world be like without Refugees? War-torn countries so unsafe their inhabitants flee into a great unknown with only their loved ones and what they can carry. Camps upon camps of Humanity grieving lives they had to put down in order to survive. If…
