What grief taught me about how to survive in times like these

These are strange times aren't they? I've heard that phrase a lot recently and it can't be denied. These are strange times indeed. Another thing I've heard recently is that we have entered a time of collective grief. I get that. The life we knew has been turned upside down suddenly and we are losing things that we, in our privileged Western lives, took for granted. Our birthday parties are being cancelled. Our summer holiday plans have been destroyed. Our ability to drive to a beauty spot for a picnic has been withdrawn.

Of course, though we're collectively being impacted, we're each impacted differently. We're each losing different things. The mother on maternity leave is losing the life of coffee mornings and baby groups she'd been looking forward to. My twelve year old is losing her new-found freedom. Students are missing nights out and exams. Some will miss their final year of school or graduation. Grandparents are missing their grandchildren. Many people are losing the activities that helped them to feel sane and connected. And, in case we forget, there are other people who are losing their lives to this silent killer and others who are being denied the opportunity to say goodbye. That's a whole new layer to grief.

There's so much that could be written on the subject, so much that is being written. About how much more impacted the people living in small flats with no gardens are. About how horrendous it must be for people who are trapped at home with abusive parents or partners. About how this is situation is overwhelmingly worse for the people who are being forced to keep travelling on public transport, who are working on the frontline, who have lost their jobs, who don't have an Ocado reserved pass. There's no question that this is a lot easier for people like me. I'm a single parent and that's hard but I'm privileged. I live in a lovely house with a lovely garden in a leafy part of town. And, though I've lost my usual way of making a living and am not eligible for as much government support as some, I can adapt my business to work online and I have savings. I am incredibly grateful.

What I want to write about though, is how I believe this is easier for me not just because I'm privileged, but because I've already lived through so much grief and trauma. To be honest, I'm so accustomed to my life being derailed, that this new reality feels relatively easy to absorb. I'm a bit peeved that every time I think life might get better, something else goes wrong but this is how I've come to expect life to go. I'm a bit bored and a lot tired but, as a single parent, I'm used to that. I'm used to not being able to go out when I want to and I'm used to juggling children and working from home. It's not a dramatic change for me. Mostly though, I'm familiar with having my world turned upside down overnight and to having to adjust. I'm used to having to survive in a world that is not of my choosing. I can apply everything I've learned from the loss of my partner to this new situation and, so far, it's really helping.

Here's what I learned. I share it in case it helps you too.

We are not in control of life. We we can plan for the future but we can never guarantee that the future we plan for will come to fruition. The future is always unwritten and unpredictable. When my partner died, I stopped thinking of the future and learned to get through each day one at a time. That serves me well now. There's no point, for me, in wondering when this period will end or what I will do when it does. I just get up and set about getting through each day one at a time. That helps me. Don't get me wrong, I fantasise about hugging people and going on dates and on holidays but mostly I just think about what to do in this moment and the next. This is how life is built.

Even in the worst of times, there are always things that make us feel a bit better. We should lean towards those things and structure our days around them. Writing makes me feel better. It grounds me. Doing my work as a writing facilitator makes me feel better. I know that I should be gentle with myself and work less but working gives me a sense of purpose and helps me to feel useful, and feeling useful helps me to keep getting up in the morning. Being useful is something we can turn our attention to now. How can we play our part in helping someone worse off? When I experienced loss, writing about it and sharing my journey helped others and helping others made me feel better. Sharing writing prompts helps others now. It's the thing I can do that improves the lives of other people and that helps me too.

Being outside helps me to feel better. Everything feels more manageable with your feet or your hands on the earth and your eyes lifted to the sky. Exercise makes me feel better. I can't swim at the moment so I've returned to doing yoga. Moving my body helps to shift my mindset.

Connecting with people makes me feel better. So, I programme in those video calls, even though it's not the same, even though all this screen time is tiring. And I make the most of all of those events that I can now attend. Like so many people: the elderly and those with disabilities, single parents are no longer excluded from cultural events. I love that! And I stand in my garden and talk to my neighbours from two metres away. It makes me feel better. The truth is that this grief is so much easier than the grief I experienced before because we're in it together and everyone wants to chat to me. I don't feel nearly as isolated now as I did four years ago.

The sense of community is something I'm really grateful for. That there are always things to be grateful for and that beauty can be found even in the darkest days is something I learned in grief. Looking for the beauty is another thing that makes me feel better. In early grief, I hated being told to look for silver linings but, over time, I became expert at it and there are a multitude of beautiful things to notice now, especially if we can be outside and slow down. The sense of community as people clap the NHS, the tiny wonder of blossom unfurling, the laughter of children, a conversation with a neighbour that I never really knew before.

Being mindful is a game-changer. Giving your full attention to whatever you're engaged in can calm anxiety and make everything a source of wonder. As a child, I could lie on the ground and be completely absorbed in the movement of an insect on the grass. Those insects are still there now, if we stop and look. Even mundane tasks can be more enjoyable if pay attention to them, if we really feel the water on our hands as we wash them - again. And it's good to lose ourselves in any activity that absorbs us and that takes us away from what's in our minds, to cultivate that sense of flow by writing, dancing, playing music.

In grief I also learned a hard lesson for a high-achiever like me. It's a lesson that I've learned from chronic illness and single parenting too. I learned that I couldn't do it all and that I had to slow down. I learned to pace myself. Like grief, this is likely to be a marathon, not a sprint. It's ok to spend hours doing nothing much at all. My son has just spent five hours playing Minecraft. It's not ideal but he'll be ok. I will make him exercise after lunch and we'll play a game or do some baking. He knows that he is loved and that he is safe. That's what matters most. In grief, I learned to only pay attention to the things and the people that mattered most.

Still, it sucks, doesn't it? It sucks that our family holiday is cancelled and that I can't go on my writing retreat next week. It sucks that I'm on my own with no partner and that I've no idea when I can next go on a date (though grateful, so grateful that I'm not stuck with the wrong partner at this time!) It's hard work doing everything on my own. This is a difficult time, no question. We can't always be Pollyanna. And that's the other thing I learned from grief. I learned that it was ok to be honest. That it was ok to reach out to other people and say "I'm struggling with this". Just because other people have it worse doesn't take away from the reality that we're all finding this hard, that we're all losing our own particular things, that we're all experiencing grief. Grief needs to be expressed in order to be healed. So, I'm expressing myself. It helps me feel better. I hope it helps you too.

Something to be grateful for - the hotel garden in walking distance of my house.

This is not the story that I wanted to write

My book arrived in the post this week. What a thing of beauty it is. It is heavy and smooth in my hands, the paper has the lovely off-white tint of, well, real books and it has my name on the front in big letters. It has only just struck me as I sit here looking at it, that it also has a picture of me on the front cover. That little figure in the yellow cardigan walking poetically alongside an abandoned house - that's me. 

I remember the day that the photograph was taken. It was four and a half years ago now. How can it have been so long? I was having the most wonderful day with a man I was about to fall in love with. I didn't know yet that he took beautiful photographs, just knew that in his company I felt righted, aligned, deeply happy. I miss feeling like that. He sent me the photo later on that day as a memento of 'a magical day'. Seven months later, he died. Just like that. Unthinkable then. Unthinkable, even now. 

I took a selfie with the book. It's what authors do. It's a lot of work to write a book and the first sighting of the actual thing is a moment to be cherished and celebrated. I shared the photo on social media and got the expected outpouring of enthusiastic comments: how exciting, how proud you must be, enjoy! I should perhaps have cracked open the champagne but it was a Monday and I had my kids to drive around and no-one to drink it with, plus I'm on a stupid detox diet. I showed it to the kids anyway and they were as momentarily impressed as kids can be on seeing the book that their mum wrote about the death of a man they barely knew. They turned to find their names in the acknowledgements and went back to their screens while I went to cook the tea. It was a bit of an anti-climax on the whole. 

The truth is that I'm not really sure that I feel like celebrating anyway. I'm not really sure what I'm feeling at all. Proud, yes, but also anxious, sad and overwhelmed. My story is going back out into the world and I am going with it, on the cover and between the pages, on the radio and in newspaper articles and at literary events. It's daunting. There was a time when all I wanted to do was tell the story of my heartache, when I all wanted to do was talk about loss. But I'm not in that place anymore. Or I wasn't until my words became a book. And now I'm going back there again. 

I read it cover to cover on Monday night once the children were in bed, just to check that the words were all where they should be. They were. All of the memories, all of the metaphors for grief. They were all there, bound up in four hundred pages of poetry and prose. Of course, I thought, it could be edited further. Of course, I thought, it's a bit self-involved. But it's pretty good, I think. Yes, I am proud. 

As I read it though, these phrases jumped out at me. 

This is not the story that I wanted to write. 

I could make this a bestselling memoir and then what? You would still be dead. 

I didn't want a memoir of loss - I wanted a living love that lasted. 

It's true. 

The book is another ending, my journey tied up with the journey of the book. It's done now. That episode of my life is over, summed up in one neat volume. But like all of the other endings on the journey, it is a false ending. Because I will keep talking about it and writing about it. Because I will always have to live with it. Because it's part of who I am. Because it will never really be over. Because I would never want to completely leave it, leave him, behind. 

'His place in your life is documented and that's something very special,' said one friend. It made me happy to think of it like that. I like that I have memorialised our relationship. 'Paul would be very proud,' said another. Would he? I don't know. I hope he would. I hope he is. I hope he's pretty chuffed to see his photo used as a book cover. It's nice to see his photo and my name together like that. 'We should make a book of your photos and my words,' I said, the night before he died. 'We will,' he said. And here it is. I hope he's proud. I hope it helps other people. I'm glad that I wrote it. But this isn't the story that I wanted to write.