Psychologist shares advice on dealing with grief in the wake of lawmaker shootings
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Minnesotans are grieving, angry and outraged after Representative and Speaker Emeritus Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were fatally shot in their home over the weekend.
To work through some of those feelings, MPR News host Lisa Ryan spoke with Molly Ruggles, a licensed psychologist and the assistant clinical director of the Family Means Center for Grief and Loss in St. Paul.
Press play above to listen to their conversation, or read a transcript below, edited for length and clarity.
People are continuing to work through their feelings about what happened over the weekend. Is it possible to feel a sense of grief over someone you haven’t met?
Absolutely. I think there’s a lot that gets stirred up when we have the death — especially the violent death — of a public figure. We are also such a small community in Minnesota that I think this really hits home.
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People might not even realize they're feeling grief. How might that start to show up physically and mentally?
Part of what makes this event so complex is that there was a lot of trauma leading up to her death, and to how things unfolded. And when there is a traumatic component of a death, it is even more complex. And the way that we all experience that can look really different.
People might find that they’re feeling a lot of anger, a lot of panic or fear. They may also find that they’re feeling an overwhelming sense of grief and desperation. And some people might also find that they are not feeling much at all, or are feeling really numb or disconnected or shut down.
I think as we get a little bit of distance from the traumatic event, with the help and support of a therapist or a friend or other communities of support, we are then able to have a little bit more access to the grief.
Grief is a really natural and healthy way of dealing with a loss, something that we all have the capability to do, and the trauma can make it sometimes more complex to get to that place, to be able to healthily move through the grief.
You brought up the trauma aspect of this. Entire neighborhoods were on lockdown for hours. For many there’s a sense of loss in feeling safe and secure in their homes.
For all of us, in order to go into the world every day and live our lives, we have to have some kind of a perception of the world as pretty safe, pretty predictable.
Lots of things are within our control, and when events like this happen, that illusion of the world as being a safe and predictable place is shattered, and it takes time to kind of rebound from that, and for us to go back to feeling more of a sense of safety in our own body again, and then rebuilding.
Hhow does this event that happened shift a little bit of what my perception of the world is, what my experience in the world is, and also allows me to keep moving forward and living my life every day.
What do you want people to keep in mind in the days and weeks ahead as they continue with their lives?
I think whenever we’re healing, you know, particularly when we’re healing from trauma or from a loss, making time to be with your people. Be with your pets. Be with anything that brings you comfort.
Talking about it and also spending time not talking about it, and just letting any of those emotions that are there come up to the surface, allow them to flow through you and find ways to take action that feel meaningful.
Melissa and Mark Hortman’s children, Colin and Sophie released such a beautiful statement. And one of the things they said was, “If you'd like to honor our parents, here are some ideas,” and the last thing they said was, “Stand up for what you believe in, especially if that thing is justice and peace.”
In the midst of a trauma, we can all feel incredibly helpless and like there’s nothing we can do, like we have no agency. Finding ways to step back into a place of agency and action can be really empowering and really healing.
