Grief and Mourning – A Community Conversation

Doing it healthily, with no judgment while taking care of yourself.

Last night, once again, the community gathered and created a space because we need healing.

As far as our lifetime, the world has dealt with more deaths, grief, and mourning over the past two years. Largely due to the COVID-19/Coronavirus, but other causes of death include natural causes, violence, specifically domestic violence, drunk driving, and others. Whatever the cause of death for our loved one(s), there have been many. Our amount of grief and mourning is at an all-time high.

Knowing the previous and being aware that grief and mourning are parts of trauma, we focused on the process of grief and mourning. It is very traumatic considering how we used to grieve before the pandemic. The world pandemic has also changed how we respond to death as a community. It isn’t as easy to just go to the family’s home and take food like we used to. A lot of our gathering has now moved to virtual spaces, including social media.

Speaking of social media, let’s be a lot more hesitant when naming someone’s death. Can we give the family time to inform distant relatives, and close friends before we start posting on social media?
That for many has been very traumatic.

Thank you to Donald Osgood and Moe Gadson, it was a real conversation. Thank you both for sharing your experiences with grief, how you grieve and how you both tap into your community support system and/circle of friends, other ways to grieve healthily.

Three major things we also discussed were the importance of drinking water, eating, and sleeping. All three are important.

We also discussed different ways of grieving. One of the ways we discussed was using Peace Play, a program of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute.

Check out the full conversation below: