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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
Thanksgiving is my mom’s absolute favorite holiday. Growing up Jewish she never connected with Christmas, but Thanksgiving was a holiday everyone celebrated in her mixed income, predominantly white mid western neighborhood in the 1950s, so it helped her feel totally connected with everyone else in her school and in her community. She’s been known to go a little crazy when it comes to celebrating. She has tons of ceramic pumpkins – plus a really beautiful Le Creuset pumpkin tureen we got her one year — and has been known to collect and iron multicolored leaves in advance to decorate the table. She also has a white blouse embroidered with Thanksgiving leaved and cornucopias and Pilgrims and who knows what that she always breaks out for the once a year occasion. We tease her for it, but of course we love it. I’ve always loved Thanksgiving too, both because it was definitely our holiday (again, unlike Christmas), and in part because growing up it always started with lots of cooking on Wednesday, then stretched into a lazy Friday and the full weekend. In college it was even better because the beginning of Thanksgiving week would feel so quick, and the anticipation would be so great. The Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade has always been a beloved tradition in our family too, ever since my sibs and I would watch it in footie pajamas on the fold out couch in the family room when we were small. Of course we knew this year would be really different. We knew we wouldn’t have the whole family, from grandparents to young cousins and everyone in between, all piled up in a single house sharing rooms and beds, having cousin sleepovers, leaving kids with my parents to watch so we could go out on rare dinner dates and eat fancy food and drink fancy drinks with no kids around. When we saw these thankful signs at Michael’s — strings of simple balsa wood letters on a hemp rope — we bought one for my mom and another for us, then went back and bought more for the rest of the family. We colored them all in identical colors, then shipped them off to each household so we could all have them hanging upon Thanksgiving and see them during the family Thanksgiving Zoom. Together not together. Best we could do in these pandemic times. Oh yeah — one more thing: I learned I can dictate journaling entries right into my phone! This was my easiest one yet.
December 1, 2020
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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
As a mental health provider, I meet with individual adults experiencing anxiety and depression. My work has been virtual since the pandemic started. I have a number of colleagues that I meet and talk with regularly. All of us are busier than we have ever been, and are not able to see new clients. We have been able to refer clients we can't see to each other before, and now we can't. As I have reached out to widen my contacts, they are all full too. Over the past week, I have noticed that almost all of the clients I meet with talked about being at their wits end in dealing with the pandemic. People have certainly complained about how it is impacting their lives previously, but not being at their wits end, as I have been hearing recently. Clients with young kids are feeling really cooped up and stressed about trying to care for their kids and work. Older people are feeling lonely and isolated, and everyone is sick of not being able to freely see family and friends, or just go to the movies. It is hard to hold all of this stress and anxiety, particularly when it is hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and when I am feeling it myself. Self-care is really important. I have been emphasizing this for clients and practicing it myself. For me, being outside every day has been crucial to surviving this past year, as well as having regular conversations with people I care about. I think these are the things that are helping me to manage through this difficult time.
February 5, 2021