'we're all grieving over covid. Our pain can be an agent of change'

Peter Stanford 03 April 2021 6:00pm BST “I’ve witnessed more intense suffering this past year than I would ever imagine I would in a lifetime,” reflects Julia Samuel. As a psychotherapist

for 30 years, working with the bereaved in both NHS and private practice, she has helped many people face life-changing traumas. But those caused by Covid, she believes, are on a different

scale altogether. Most obviously there is the death toll of 127,000 and rising. “And for every death there are probably between eight and nine significant people who are directly affected –

friends, siblings, parents, partners, children. So that is a million people who have gone through a traumatic death.” Then there is the “collective grief”, caused by what she calls “living

losses” where many more have seen their jobs, their financial security, and their way of life changed forever. “As a result,” she says, “people generally are feeling fragile... as if a layer

of skin has been taken off.” In the face of such a tidal wave of suffering Samuel is, however, resolute in seeing signs of recovery as we move out of lockdown. “The single biggest predictor

of how individuals cope with grief is having the love of, and a connection to, others. With the arrival of spring and the loosening of restrictions, I hope we will all have more energy to

reach out and be the compassionate communities these grieving families and individuals so badly need.” The mother of four grown-up children, Samuel, 61, is best-known as the Founder Patron

of the charity Child Bereavement UK, which she set up in 1994 with others, including her good friend Diana, Princess of Wales. The two met in 1987 at a dinner – Samuel belongs to the banking

branch of the Guinness family – and, as she has recalled, “we just hit it off”. As mothers of small children back then, Diana would on occasion pick Samuel’s children up from school when

she was busy and make their supper. She remains close to Diana’s sons – with Prince William now Child Bereavement UK’s royal patron – and is godmother to Prince George. Her name has been in

the news of late with widespread speculation that she is the friend of Prince Harry’s “mom” that Meghan Markle told Oprah Winfrey she had turned to for help with mental health problems

during her first pregnancy. Samuel, though, is giving nothing away. “I know what you are going to ask,” she tells me almost before the words are out of my mouth. “And can you talk about it?”

   “No.” Elegantly dressed in black and sitting in her consulting rooms in west London, she manages to make that one word sound both firm and incredulous. After all, confidentiality is key

to her three decades of work with her clients. And it is the experience of having listened these past 12 months to so many who have sought out her help that gives her insight into Covid-19’s

wider long-term impact on society. In a new section on the pandemic added to the paperback edition of _This Too Shall Pass_, her best-selling book on how we deal with change in our lives,

she offers a carefully anonymised account of her efforts to support “Eric”, a retired professor who spent five days on a ventilator with Covid, as he struggled to recover. “I am not the same

person who went into hospital,” he told her despondently when they first met. “I am changed”. He and his wife of many years, “Pauline”, were finding it hard to get on since he had been

discharged, with him physically dependent on her as he learnt how to walk again.  “They had lost each other,” says Samuel. “It was a sort of bereavement.” As a case study, it is

illuminating, she believes, because it reveals the huge knock-on effects that Covid has had in families. “Pauline was furious, which isn’t what you are meant to be like, but it is what

people feel. “What she was thinking about Eric was, ‘I did not want this frightening person who is not the one I married sitting opposite me, needing me to wipe his bottom and feed him’. 

Some people are very good at that, but for most of us it is not what we would choose. We marry in sickness and in health, but it is the health that we want.” In another remark of Eric’s, she

sees a deeper truth. “Previously a fit, healthy, very active man in his early 70s, he told me, ‘I now know I can die, that I will die’.”   “One of the consequences of us living through a

pandemic,” she suggests, “is that I am not going to have to shout so loudly as I did before about recognising that we are mortal. Around kitchen tables this last year, there have been many

more conservations with parents about living wills, where they want to be buried.” That is, she insists, something good coming out of something very bad. “And we have also recognized the

preciousness of our lives as a result. Eric definitely got that, and he and Pauline are now doing much better. He feels renewed by the trauma he has been through.” We have all been hurt by

the events of the past year, but pain, she believes, need not always be something destructive. “All of us have an aversion to pain, but pain can be the agent of change.”   So grieving the

career, the relationships, the moments together and milestones that have been lost or missed as a result of lockdowns, can also be a way of “adjusting psychologically” and moving forward. To

encourage that process Samuel would like to see more events, like the National Day of Reflection that took place on March 23, where people were invited to leave a light on their doorstep.

“It would be something in the collective sense, not just for those who have lost people, but also for those who feel completely overwhelmed with fear and anxiety and uncertainty.” A

collective ritual, she argues, “is very stabilising. You go out, you connect to other people, and you see that you are not so alone.” Many of those she has worked with have lost loved ones

to Covid, their grieving process made so much harder by the nature of the virus and the restrictions it has placed on the rituals around death that we usually rely upon. The fact that Covid

patients can deteriorate very quickly and die within hours means that for the so suddenly bereaved, “it lands in their system like a devastation. I have seen the physiological effects of it.

People shake, they can’t concentrate, they can’t sleep. “ Too often the chance to say a proper goodbye has been stolen. “I have been working with a woman who had been married for 58 years.

She watched her husband’s funeral on an iPad on her own in her flat.  No people, no hugs, no food brought round by neighbours.” It has been an experience repeated many times over in almost

epidemic proportions. “What I keep seeing is this almost surreal grief where they know the person has died, but they don’t feel the person has died. They are stuck in time. “They all say

they are in limbo. And with unlocking now starting to happen, it is only going to be even more difficult for them because they will see the rest of the world potentially going back to seeing

people, to having their normal life. “Every first thing you do when you are grieving is a shock. And with unlocking they will have to start doing things like seeing people again for the

first time.” What will we collectively remember of the past year as we move on? “I can’t imagine this experience won’t leave a lasting mark.  I would imagine anyone from eight to 85 will

look back on this as the most significant event in their lives because it has been so long lasting. 2020 and 2021 will be seen as massive years that changed everything.” And change – as her

book stresses – however much we dislike it, fear it, and find it painful, can bring something beneficial. “People talk of post-traumatic growth, and I have seen that often in my work. With

Covid, it doesn’t take away the loss on such a huge scale, but we can learn to live with the pain and re-enter our lives with a changed perception of what matters in the world, and with our

own resilience stronger than we imagined.” _THIS TOO SHALL PASS BY JULIA SAMUEL (RRP £9.99). BUY NOW FOR £8.99 AT BOOKS.TELEGRAPH.CO.UK OR CALL 0844 871 1514_