Returning to Campus
The violence that our campus experience on Monday ripped away our peace and affects each of us differently. All of us cope with grief differently; some by focusing on work, by focusing on others, by escaping...yet, we all must address both what we feel and recognize and honor what we lost.
My own experience in living this has taught me some things. You may not know this but 'my' office (1250E Anthony Hall) was first Dan's. We didn't just work together in the department, we worked in the same suite. I know how hard it is to walk into a place alone for the first time; to wonder HOW life could ever feel normal again; to cry uncontrollably in the aisle at Kroger.
I call it "re-entry." The hardest part of grief is the rest of the world keeps going when our world has stopped. The other thing - is that there is no way out of grief, except through. Meaning, we have to face it, eventually. We'd love a detour. To ignore. To escape. To wave the wand, and the hard just disappears.
The way through involves feeling your feelings when they come. ...and "the feelings" aren't always tears. It might feel like a weight, or a shadow, or a heaviness...and in the process of "naming" them, you can start to acknowledge them and then let them go. For me, the crying is how I release the heaviness. (and I don't like crying in front of others, so this requires time by myself - which when I'm feeling the things I want to avoid - requires effort to "make" myself sit)
The next way through requires sitting with what you lost and grieving for that. Again, this is the action of acknowledging, and then honoring, and then grieving - and deciding what you will keep & hold onto, and what you will let go of. ...and this part can take time. It took me 10 months before I was ready to do that after Dan passed. However, it was a powerful step for me toward healing. In honoring who I was before and what I lost, it allowed me to begin to be open to new possibilities of what could be.
When I wrote about this process, I often used the phrase "fumbling forward." The process isn't smooth or easy, but yearning forward is one of the ways through. Give yourself - and others - grace to not know, or to fumble along the way. For some, the best way forward is to come back next week; for others, you may need more time or space. It's okay. Ask for what you need.
Recognize that coping with our grief is different for all - but there are healthy and unhealthy ways to cope. You may need space alone, but don't cut yourself off from others completely. You may need to be busy doing something, but don't get so busy that you avoid the feelings. You may be afraid to enter the grief space because you might not come out (that was my fear), so when I did - I told my friend Karen, and she said, "Well, if you don't come out, I'll come in after you."
...and that, my friends, is most important. Have a community who will come in after you. Know that community is present to you now: your SpartANS family. One of the most powerful things we have is each other. As we fumble our way forward, we aren't alone.
Ask someone to walk with you into your home, to your first class, heck - to all your classes. Rely on each other. We are stronger together, even when we grieve.
