How to acknowledge someone's loss during the pandemic without disenfranchising their grief, writes elainekasket
clients—I’ll call her Sarah—contacted me in distress. Her beloved mother had just died after an unexpected short illness.
When I saw an advertisement on one of my professional networks, I thought of her. Facilitated by grief professionals, the online support session was specifically for women who had lost their mothers to COVID-19, or whose loss had been colored by circumstances of the pandemic. Straightaway I sent Sarah an email with the link.session, I inquired about whether she’d attended the support group. She had, but her experience had only increased her sense of isolation.
First, the incident struck me as a stunningly insensitive gaffe for two experienced grief practitioners to make, and I suspected that the online context of the support group had influenced matters. Had the meeting been a non-virtual gathering, with no access to a blush-sparing private chat function, would two seasoned counselors really have silenced and excluded Sarah? I suspected not.
and all the other intangibles that come with physical co-presence, the facilitators would likely have behaved very differently.Disenfranchised grief Disenfranchised grief occurs when sadness over a loss is pushed aside, not recognized, or otherwise discounted. Sometimes people experience disenfranchised grief because of: friends, rather than family; the mistress, rather than the widow; the members of a person’s online gaming community, rather than their ‘in real life’ associates.
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