Since the pandemic has started we have had a tremendous number of losses. Some of these are relatively small, like the loss of our usual routine. Some are larger, like the loss of being able to hug or even be with others. Some losses felt catastrophic as many of us had death, threat to income, insecure futures to deal with.
If we look at some of the losses there can be a cleansing of what is not essential, leaving what is essential, and this leads to a rebirth. In nature when there is a loss, like a seed dying, this leads to new growth. In many ways we need to have rebirths. We need to see that the old had purpose and meaning, but much like the baton pass in a relay race, is now the responsibility to move into a new phase of life.
For most of us we do not have a template to deal with loss, much less to know how to have life after loss. Even people schooled in grief might say that with all the uniqueness of what we have gone through over the past months we need to find new ways to deal with loss, and then to move on from the loss into what life has for us. Our closest examples are when people in the past have dealt with cataclysmic losses.
This writing, though, invites a new perspective as we look to come out of the losses we have experienced. When things are taken from us the first thing we can do is look to creatively replace what is lost with an interim measure. Not going to the gym, for instance, can be replaced by bicycling or walking until we feel ready to go back to the gym.
Beyond building a temporary bridge related to what is lost is a start. Then we need to find a new way to process the loss and lastly focus on what the future has for us. We can ask how what was lost gave love and meaning to us, building up in us more of the potential to be who we can be, and how we can live into this potential.