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Grieving the "New Normal"

by Holly Schippers | May 20, 2020 | Bookmark +
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Have you ever heard of the stages of grief? With everything going on, we are grieving our “normal." That means you should give yourself permission to feel the way you feel. If you are sad, mad, bitter, anxious, numb, or too mixed up to even know what to feel, let it be OK. What I would ask from you next is to respect everyone’s differences in the way they grieve. There are so many paths of information coming at us from so many different directions and everyone claims to be an expert. It is hard to figure out, what is science, what is politics, what is a cry for attention, and where the truth lies.

In times like this you have to choose what to believe for yourself and rely on instinct and research you do for yourself through people that you trust. Then take into consideration that the people you trust may not be the same people another salon trusts, then you may find some that trust no one. The key to survival in a professional manner is kindness and respect for all of the different types of grieving. Allow yourself AND others to feel the way they feel.

In theory, we would not criticize each other for how we chose to dress a family member that had passed away during the visitation service. In some ways this is very similar. The service and how you choose to dress someone are based on your beliefs, your knowledge of that person, and factors that outside people may not be aware of such as that person’s requests.

A lot of that is going on now, salons have to follow guidelines given to them by a state or territory, and they don’t match everyone else’s. We are being given guidelines and advice about daily activity by people who do not follow the advice they give. It is not our place to judge other salons and how they follow it or if they follow it, nor how they feel about it. Let’s all grieve what we knew as normal, be kind to our fellow people in their grief, and work towards a new day where hopefully we will see the other side of this intact as people and an industry.

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