LET’S ADAPT
Dear Friends,
As has become our tradition at Stephy’s Place, we closed for the first two weeks in July for a brief hiatus. It’s kind of funny how often we may not realize we need a break until we actually take one! I confess I enjoyed my break, but I have missed my groups and I look forward to re-connecting this week. Grief, however, usually does not take a break (in early grief, we even grieve in our sleep), nor does life, nor does COVID-19 it seems. As time moves forward so does everything else; we still need to pay our bills, to shop for groceries, to take care of our health, to take care of our homes and pets and cars, and toilets, and yards, and gardens, and air conditioners, and swimming pools, and hot water heaters, and… as you well know the list just goes on. So too does the list of those suffering; we have a dear aunt in El Salvador who is a hospital technician and now is in ICU fighting for her life. Sometimes we wait for a break, but it seemingly never comes. So, if there is not going to be a break from all of this… what can we do?
We need to find ways to adapt.
I feel very fortunate and privileged to be a part of one of the means we have at our disposal to help us to adapt. Our support groups are beautiful microcosms of what can happen when people support and care for one another. I think they show us the beautiful possibilities that lie ahead for humanity, if we can begin to let go of our differences and embrace one another as we are, where we are, how we are. Grief, it seems, can teach us many things, I just wish she were a kinder teacher. We are learning to adapt, and we are helping to teach one another to adapt,- to adapt not only to living with grief, but to adapt to life as it is now, to relationships in our lives, and to adapt to the greater world outside that just seems to keep on spinning whether we like it or not.
In our adapting I think it is good to remember that sometimes adapting is a matter of choice, for instance, we can choose to look at things in negative or positive ways. As Alan
Wolfelt says in today’s reflection in Grief One Day at a Time, “We do not have proof about what tomorrow will bring, but we can choose to believe- today- that good things are coming.”
Peace & Serenity, Kevin