Grief Lessons of the Apocalypse: Self-care Is a Joyful Jab in the Arm

Abstract

When the pandemic hit New York City, life changed overnight. In an effort to stay as safe as possible, usual roles and activities shifted. People became isolated, both from each other and from their usual ways of functioning and defining themselves. The professional practices of social work and social work education morphed at the same time, as did the personal lives of practitioners, students, and educators. The author describes navigating shifts in multiple roles: doctoral student, professor, social worker, patient, friend, and human being. Themes of shared trauma, object relations, grief, and parallel process are described in the context of the existential angst of the pandemic from a first-person narrative of the first few months of quarantine.