“How to Cope With Grief During the COVID-19 Pandemic”

“There’s no workaround for grief. There’s no one way to grieve, and everyone grieves differently,” according to New York City-based family grief counselor and certified thanatologist Jill Cohen. Grieving while socially isolated can lead to too much time ruminating in your head, which can intensify the feelings of sadness, she says.

People who are grieving are “grieving harder” because “we can’t see what the future is like, nothing is certain” explains Cohen. She suggests “radical acceptance”—a concept rooted in mindfulness, which asserts the importance of acknowledging the reality of your hardship, without judging your emotional response to it — of the challenges of current circumstance.