How 2020 was a Perfect Representation of the Cycle of Acceptance

Entering the cycle was inevitable. But how do you exit it?

Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining, and Acceptance

You’ve likely heard of the concept of the Cycle of Acceptance before. One definition reads:

“it is a predictable cycle most people and organizations go through upon receipt of very bad news.” — dictionary. com

March 11, 2020. The declaration of a pandemic was indeed very bad news. I was unwilling to believe it, and without realizing it, I had entered the first stage of the cycle.

Denial

My inner voice whispered to me. “Something is going on in China. China is far away. Why should things that happen in China have to affect me? That’s so unfair.”

A week prior, I was sitting in a hotel conference room with a few hundred other people. The lady next to me scrolled furiously through posts and memes that were mostly about toilet paper. I didn’t really understand. They were meant to be funny, and they were. For awhile.

Later on, the lady said something about this new disease that calcifies your lungs. That didn’t sound good, but it didn’t mean it was factual or that it would ever reach here. After all, we’d been through H1N1, SARS, and other “plagues” in the past. This couldn’t be any different or worse, and besides, we weren’t in Toronto or New York; we were in the boonies compared to those cities. Safe. Apart.

The main speaker at the conference was of the opinion that by July 2020 there’d be a vaccine and it would all be over. I even shook hands with random people in the room that day. A whisper of concern stirred within me as our palms touched, but I shrugged it off because I had unknowingly already crossed the threshold into denial.

Wait. What?

I started to take things more seriously when my music group started talking about postponing our 2020 summer tour until the next year. “This is March,” my inner voice barked in annoyance. “Things will be fine by July…won’t they?”

My walls of denial began to crumble when soon after, our rehearsals were canceled for three weeks. Then, since our rehearsal space was within a large university, rehearsals were canceled until further notice. Ergo, so was our May performance, and eventually, the Europe tour we had all been planning (and paying for) since the previous year was officially postponed.

Anger

Anger took a little while to seep in. I took my family’s Zoom Easter dinner event with a grain of salt (no pun intended), and even with some amusement over the novelty. “Okay, the coronavirus is a real thing,” I admitted to myself. It had to be dealt with, so I played nice.

Since I worked from home anyway, staying home was normal. As an already compulsive hand-washer, using hand sanitizer and keeping a safe distance from others was not that much of a stretch or inconvenience. For awhile.

However, losing our Europe tour felt like a major gut punch, and as spring rolled into summer, the seeds of anger sprouted and flourished in the noxious dirt of constantly changing news reports and confusing public health orders. Nothing seemed to be getting any better.

Before masks became mandatory in our area, whenever I saw somebody wearing one, I’d get angry. Why? Eventually, it struck me that the masks represented fear. Fear, pure and simple. It made me angry that we had to behave as if everyone around us was contagious, yet at the time, my region was considered to be low-risk.

In fact, for that and other reasons, the National Hockey League chose our city as one of two hubs in which to host their playoffs in August, and do you know what? Not a single case of Covid-19 was detected among the players, officials, staff, or media members for the entire duration of the event.

Ha! So there! Given proper procedures, this thing was 100% controllable, I thought. Why were we living in such fear?

Conspiracy theories abounded, and though I felt most were nonsense, I began to hear more about totalitarianism, fascism, and a “new world order.” Correlating this with some personal memories, it occurred to me that when a person or group wanted to exercise control over another, some of the first tactics employed were isolation and dehumanization.

What were we suddenly experiencing? Isolation from other humans, and ‘defacing’ ourselves behind masks. Add in a scattered belief that the pandemic was all a hoax, and the cauldron of anger went from simmering to boiling.

As summer neared its end, the big question became all about schools. The prospect of schools not opening in September, and of all the regular fall activities such as another performance season being handcuffed, was unthinkable. When the unthinkable became real, the anger began to implode into the next stage of the cycle.

Depression

For several years, I’d already been taking medication for depression. As mental health issues came to the forefront of discussions, some positives came out of it: the realization that I was not alone in this kind of suffering, and that depression and other mental health issues were real. No one was immune, just as no one was immune to the coronavirus. Ironic, non?

One day stretched into the next. Day and night seemed interchangeable. The memories of attending concerts or meeting friends at a restaurant or even the prospect of doing so faded into dimness.

I refused to speak the phrase “the new normal”. I didn’t want a new normal, dammit. This would never be normal, no matter how it was dressed up in a comfortable euphemism! No how. No way. I decline. I will not go quietly into the darkness!

With this resolution, the suffocating cloud of depression thinned, revealing an alternative coping mechanism that happened to be the next natural progression of the cycle.

Bargaining

Winter began to reach its frosty arms toward us. Thanksgiving was a bust. Christmas was in danger. The coronavirus Grinch would ruin it all, and why? “I’ve been a good girl, I followed all the rules, I wear a mask. I made sacrifices.” Now it seemed all in vain. Not my fault. Why should I continue to be punished? But, since the only behavior I could change was my own, I doubled down on the precautions and protocols.

Discarding my earlier distaste for mask-wearing and the annoying phenomenon of folks turning them into a fashion statement, I broke down and bought several re-usable 3-ply masks with funky patterns, and even used them as stocking stuffers.

Enter 2021. While it brought with it a sigh of relief, the ringing in of a new year didn’t mean a switch would flip and make everything alright again, but it did begin to herald the next stage of the cycle.

Acceptance

I’m not sure I’ve entirely reached this stage. However, as I complete this article, two years have passed. Masks are disappearing, and restaurants and banks no longer feel like you are entering a hazmat zone. Most people think it’s over; some say we’re far from it.

Either way, it’s hard to think we’ll ever be completely over the effects of the pandemic, or that we won’t be forever changed by the event.

“Life must go on.”

I’m reminded of September 2001, when several aircraft and their passengers were forced to land in Gander, Newfoundland. The shock and horror when those passengers were informed of what had happened that day was palpable even through the TV news screen.

One person interviewed was a clergyman. When asked if he would ever get on a flight again, he replied that he would. Why? Because “life must go on,” he said.

He was so right. We can’t stop living, even when it’s hard to visualize a better future. A friend of mine stolidly declared, “I’m not going to change my life because of this.” She accepted the rules and measures in place and used them to make the most of what was available, rather than waste mental energy worrying about if or when they would stop.

Acceptance is the end of the cycle and therefore should provide some kind of exit. Maybe acceptance is like a long hallway with a door at the end. Once you make up your mind to go there, that door can open to new ways of thinking, thriving, and making us more certain than ever that life is worth every struggle it throws at us.

Thanks for reading! You can also read more about my fiction novels and my bumpy journey to authordom by subscribing to The Jean Maxwell community, where a free ebook awaits you!