Featured Refresh
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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
This week I was really struck by this quote “Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go”, and I really tried to concentrate on that beauty, with varied success. Fall is usually my favorite time of year. It means camping, bike riding, visiting family, and hikes with friends. Catching the last warm days at the beach when the water is warmer than the air, and swimming is exhilarating. The world changes color. The light at sunset makes greens greener, and yellows yellower, for just a short time. Then slowly the leaves start to fall and the light fades and the colors that dressed the “forest’s fashion show” are left scattered on the ground. Then one last hoorah, to walk through leaf piles, and listen to the music of the shushing of dried leaves dancing around feet shuffling through them. The shades and shapes of brown, and the occasional dazzling burst of reds and yellows painted by some invisible hand. That’s the beauty of autumn letting go. The hard part is realizing many of the joys this year were missed because of Covid, so letting go became more the focus. The challenge was, and is, to stay focused in the present and not worry about the coming cold, increased isolation, and the after effects of the election. Feels like a double whammy this year, but maybe that makes this quote even more poignant...”how beautiful it is to let things go”...
October 27, 2020
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If you feel your mental health has changed since the pandemic started, talk a bit about how, and why.
I feel like I have gone through the whole grief cycle in the last year. First “it’ll never come over here” and “it won’t last”. Then great and anxiety about food supply chains and wishing desperately that we had room in our tiny house for a chest freezer. Then “what the hell people, wear your damn masks or we’ll all be trapped in our homes forever!” Many, many weeks of depression and palpable anxiety. And finally, in just the last week or two, something approaching acceptance. I’ve figured out a system that works for me while [my husband] is deployed, and hopefully will work for him when he gets back and we have to share the space again. E. has a good routine and social life with daycare and our daycare family bubble. I can bake amazing challah and pizza dough after making them both nearly every week for more than 50 weeks now. More and more people around me are getting vaccinated. Maybe soon I can be vaccinated. There is still a cynical voice in the back waiting to be let down or disappointed, but in general the optimist is winning.
March 21, 2021