Prompts for acknowledging & processing COVID grief
especially for the COVID ambivalent/avoidant
(By ‘Covid ambivalent/avoidant’ I mean folks who don’t mask etc. regularly)
For these prompts, try to actually sit with them and think them through. Write down your answers on paper if that helps, or speak them out loud, or at least think them through in full sentences. If these bring up discomfort, sit in the discomfort rather than clicking away.
What did you lose when COVID first hit in 2020?
1b. Where did you have to leave? What did you have to leave behind? Did you lose someone?
The grief of those losses is real and potent and must be acknowledged. The places you had to leave, the people you had to stop seeing, the opportunities you missed, they matter. Yes, even the ‘minor’ non-death loss you’re trying to qualify away right now.
Often when I hear people talk about grief of the initial COVID lockdown I hear them at once name a loss and, in the same breath, undercut the power or importance of that loss. Which is to say if your graduation, for example, was canceled or postponed, that matters. If you lost an internship, if you had to leave somewhere and it ended a relationship, or had to postpone a wedding, or if you lost a job, or anything else, no matter how ‘small’, it matters. I specify this because the disenfranchising of ourselves from our grief because “others have it worse” doesn’t make us stop grieving, it just makes us feel worse about our grieving. When we stifle our feelings or sadness, anger, loss, grief, etc, we’re not able to metabolize them and grow from them, instead allowing them to fester in the back of our minds.
What is a physical/mental ability you have now that you are not willing to give up?
2b. Consider what your answer to the last prompt was. Do you need your voice? Your ability to walk? To walk long distances? To be on your feet? To go to the gym? To think through complex equations? To read or write?
What feelings come up when you hear that COVID affects the senses and every organ, and that an infection can impact any of these abilities?
Do you avoid taking a COVID test when you feel sick?
4b. Can we sit with that urge and interrogate it? What would knowing change? Does not knowing change the way you walk through the world?
What thoughts/feelings come up for you when you see someone in a mask?
What comes up for you when you imagine going out in a mask now?
What are some of your core beliefs and morals?
7b. Does wearing a mask again to protect those around you align with your morals/beliefs?
What responses do you imagine you would get if you started masking again? How might you respond to them?
What does ‘returning to normal’ mean for you?
9b. Name experiences and activities that it includes. Can you continue to participate in any of these with increased covid caution?
Have you experienced brain fog, trouble reading or concentrating, noticed a decrease in lung capacity or ability to exercise, felt consistently sick or anything like this since 2020?
10b. What kind of reaction do you have in your body when you hear that these are symptoms of Long Covid?
I believe a great deal of Covid/masking ambivalence stems from the unprocessed grief of the first waves of COVID and the losses of lockdown, and the fear that masking again is reverting to a time of great loss and grief. But the grief doesn’t need to be a weight at our feet, it can move us forward and connect us to one another. We’re not going back to 2020, we’re in 2025 and continuing on, continuing into a world with pandemics & we must adjust accordingly.
So you’re curious to take more precautions against COVID. here are some action steps you can take:
locate high quality masks (hardware stores have them, and Mask Blocs can provide them for free)
order your 4 free COVID tests from USPS
wear the masks in populated spaces that people can’t avoid like on public transit, in grocery stores, in doctor’s offices
test when you feel ill (includes “just sniffles”, a “stomach bug”)
if you already do these, then begin to mask in more spaces (movie theater, shopping, catching up with friends) begin to pull back on indoor events, carry an extra mask with you, & mask at outdoor gatherings.
Interrogating our actions and holding them up against our morals and intentions is imperative to moving through this world in community and with care. It is admirable and necessary to change our behavior when we are introduced to new information, or to acknowledge the arenas in our lives we can improve upon, that we have neglected in the past. If you’ve read this far, thank you for sitting with these hard questions, for taking a step toward being more Covid aware. And I ask you as a comrade, as an accomplice, as an ally, to please genuinely consider taking the action steps listed above, and to come back to these questions over time, especially now as the Avian Flu and norovirus and RSV are growing rapidly alongside Covid.
For the Covid Conscious reading this, I will also have a prompt list of questions for the types of Covid grief we experience outside of the experiences named in this post.
Love, Alekz
PS I’m now on instagram @befriendingdeath !
I am so grateful that you have written this out. I believe it is this trauma that maintains all of the avoidance behavior and keeps us stuck..