Calling A Spade A Spade

I would like to add one more item to my list of things I know to be true. 

11. A pandemic can knock the words right out of a girl. And when she finally feels them leaking into her lungs again, they have nothing to do with flannel sheets or marriage or books. 

In the past two months, I’ve felt all the things. I’ve been so spittin' mad that for a while, Chad refused to engage in any conversation with me if it involved the virus. I was borderline irrational. Okay, maybe completely irrational. (He's a smart man for walking away from a conversation with an irrational woman.) I’ve had days of feeling perfectly calm and serene and okay. I’ve had days of refusing to look at the news because maybe if I don’t look at it, it will go away. And then I’ve read every article I could get my hands on until my head was spinning and I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut. I’ve sobbed and laughed and stared into space. 

And when I started hearing people refer to all of this as grief, I inwardly rolled my eyes. Because what reason did I have to grieve when my husband still has a job and my family has been perfectly healthy? It felt ridiculous to say that I miss the library when some wives have barely had a chance to kiss their husbands who work in the medical field. Naming the things I've felt as grief felt overwrought and dramatic.... at first. Two months later, I think its time to call a spade a spade. 

When I was a brand new mom, I did not want to name the darkness I felt "depression." But refusing to call it by its name didn't change what it was. What it did do, was keep me from starting the journey of healing. I couldn't heal from depression until I acknowledged that I was actually depressed. And we can't walk through grief in a healthy way until we admit we are grieving.

No, I don't live in New York City. No, I haven't lost a family member to COVID-19. Yes, I have a million blessing to thank God for. But, all of us have lost a sense of normalcy since the beginning of March. And when nothing feels normal, everything feels hard. In the wake of hard things, grief is a normal, human reaction.... but so is resiliency and spunk and hope. 

Naming the grief doesn't mean we give up or surrender or become a victim. Its our first step in walking bravely towards the joy waiting on the other side.