'Absolutely normal' post-Fiona grief on P.E.I.: What it looks like in adults, children

A lot of people on Prince Edward Island are feeling raw these days — on edge, depressed, overwhelmed. While so many have expressed their gratitude for the countless groups and organizations who have stepped up to help, Islanders are also experiencing profound grief.

Not only did post-tropical storm Fiona knock out power to virtually every home on the Island, it also destroyed wharves, boats, barns, livestock, homes and livelihoods. While uprooting thousands of massive trees, it also uprooted Islanders from their familiar, everyday routines.

"It's absolutely normal," clinical traumatologist Kayla Breelove Carter said of the feelings of grief Islanders are experiencing.

"We have the experience of personally experiencing the disasters that have impacted our families. But then in a more secondary approach we are also impacted by our community and other people that have perhaps been impacted in the devastation," she said.

"So, making room for empathy and making room for a little bit more gentleness and kindness for ourselves and kind of just taking it one day at a time, one step at a time, can be really helpful as we navigate this inevitably overwhelming experience."

Stages of grief

Breelove Carter said everyone experiences grief differently but there are recognizable stages, often starting with denial.

"That denial stage where it feels like shock. Maybe it's numbness or confusion ... shutting down and avoiding things is also in that stage of denial. So it may look like avoidance and procrastination or forgetting."

Anger is also a stage of grief. "That sometimes will look like frustration and impatience and resentment or irritability and all these different things feeling out of control."

Kids are humans, too, and they experience the same thing. They do experience it at a more severe level.​​​​—Kayla Breelove Carter

She said people may also go through a "bargaining" stage during which they wonder if they could have done something differently to prepare, or if there is something more they can do at this point. Some people feel a sense of blame.

"Having that sort of survivors' guilt that things have not happened as intensely or overwhelmingly as other people."

Depression and eventually acceptance are also stages of grief people may be feeling.

'Really destabilizing'

Hannah Gehrels is grieving the loss of a familiar outdoor classroom.

Gehrels is the co-ordinator of the Wild Child Forest School program in Charlottetown. It teaches children to protect the environment through repeated exposure to nature in forests and city parks.

She said she was shaken after visiting a couple of the program's regular "home base" sites that had completely changed in the storm, and were no longer safe places for children to explore and play.

"It really hit me hard. The forest that we run programs in, I know like the back of my hand. The way … certain trees look, their colour, their shape, what they're good for, exactly where the branches are that are good for climbing, all of these things," she said.

 "It's not just a workplace for me – it is much more than that. And to see it all changed was really destabilizing."

Once able to access the program's sites, Gehrels said they will "find safe places to play, rope off places and talk to the kids about safety."

Gehrels said she's also thinking about the children in the Wild Child program, who also have a relationship with the now different forest, and who may also be feeling disruption by all the change around them, including the schools they go to every day.

"We're thinking, too, about how to help kids through those changes, and process the changes and process the grief," she said.

'A really scary situation' for kids

Breelove Carter also talked about supporting children, and said it's important to keep in mind that kids 18 and under experience grief more acutely than adults and post-tropical storm Fiona and the resulting devastation has been "for a lot of them a really scary situation."

"Kids are humans, too, and they experience the same thing. They do experience it at a more severe level," she said. "These events have more exacerbated symptoms that come out."

Breelove Carter said it is important to sit down with children and meet them where they are — see how they're feeling and let them ask questions, even if you don't necessarily have all the answers.

"Just reaffirm if you are able to, to say that you are safe now and things are going to be OK," she said. "We're in this together."

She said if you're noticing that a child's behaviour has changed, it's also OK to reach out to a licensed practitioner.

As for Gehrels, she said she is processing her own grief over the loss of the familiar forest, and looking for new ways to give back to the environment and to others.

"We don't have it all planned out yet, but we're hoping to host some sort of community gathering to be able to like, grieve and mourn."