The Collective Grief We Must Face

APS Member/Author: Dorothy P. Holinger

I have known grief all my life. My baby sister died when I was a toddler, and I know what it did to my family. We couldn’t grieve her death properly because the family ethos was not to talk about our losses. Now, as a clinician, I treat bereaved patients. And I also wrote a book that describes what happens to the human self after the death of a loved one. I’ve become an expert on grief.

Yet I was unprepared for the challenges that COVID-19 and its massive death toll brought us as a nation. Death is different now. COVID patients die alone, without family. Funeral services are virtual; we can’t hold each other to grieve and cry. Grief is hard enough under normal circumstances. This feels impossible.

So how are we as a country to deal with our collective grief? And since we are likely to lose another one to two hundred thousand people or more before this is over, how are we to manage our anticipatory grief?

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