Coping Strategies

For many of us, DNA test results have delivered news that’s made nothing in our world seem normal. Our families may not be our families. The truths we’ve known may not be truths at all. We’ve been upside-down, turned around, and left looking for some kind of foothold—a way to ground ourselves in this new unreality. Then came a virus and a quarantine that have made everyone’s lives anything but normal. On top of that, an unprecedented political climate along with civil unrest have been both globally and personally destabilizing. If that weren’t enough, bring on the holidays, which for some in the best of times are difficult, stressful, and grief-inducing. But this year, even those who typically find the season joyful may experience sadness, disappointment, and grief.

If you experience anxiety, it’s likely been magnified in (or by) 2020. If you’ve experienced trauma, the fear and isolation caused by the pandemic may be retraumatizing. If you’ve been alone in quarantine or can’t spend the holidays with the people you love, your loneliness may seem overwhelming. Even if you’ve been holding your own, the common sorrow—the empathy and compassion fatigue for all who are struggling—may be depleting you. This state of life as we know it now may be getting on your last nerve.

When I visited Venice, Italy many years ago, what struck me most—after the gorgeous skies and the pastel colors that washed the ancient buildings and danced on the water—was the singing, the music of daily life that spilled out of windows, echoed in the alleys, and skated across the canals. The city had a soundtrack like no other. It was the voices of woman singing while they cooked, would-be tenors serenading their neighbors, children chirping nursery rhymes. It wasn’t the individual voices that were impressive, but the way they merged to create something bigger than the sound of each alone.

That’s what’s happening during the COVID-19 pandemic—voices are rising up and the citizens of the world are spontaneously creating a soundtrack to an event that’s unprecedented in our lifetimes. In these uncertain days, people are soothing themselves and others by singing in unison, merging their voices from windows and balconies, in the streets at a social distance, and, especially, alone together via Zoom on the Internet.

If you’re reeling from a DNA surprise, you may be no stranger to confusion, anger, and sadness. If you’re searching for family or have been in reunion, you might tumble through emotional highs and lows. If you’ve felt rejected, it may be hard not to believe you’ve done something wrong—that you are wrong.