“The lines between home and school and work are so blurred right now. I currently can’t find the onion powder and I legit thought that I should bring it up at my next sped meeting. Losing it.” My friend sent that text on Tuesday. She was, at that minute, drowning in her duties of being an Occupational Therapist for a public school system, a mother to four boys under the age of 12, and an in-house chef. I get it, I really do. Mama this, mama that, mama, mama, mama. Every time I hear my kids call for me these days, I hold my breath and wait to see what kind of damages I need to mitigate. “Get OFF the ROOF!” I yelled at my kids who had all ended up in a fight atop the shed in an attempt to deal with the shed’s “moss problem”. This while I was trying to weed through emails, conferences, and laundry. It’s enough to make a grown woman weep.
This week was incredibly imperfect. I lost it on my kids more than once, almost cried during a meeting, and ate an entire sleeve of Toblerone chocolate on my way to the grocery store last night. Denied retail therapy for the time being, I thought that I might splurge and order some Lululemon yoga pants to up my athleisure game and make me look acceptable on a Zoom conference….until I found out they cost $138 a pair. Really, Ms. Lulu Lemon? Time to bring those prices down for us stay-at-home women juggling fifty million things at once. I know that they are nice yoga pants but this TJ Maxx girl wants the max for the minimum and simply WON’T pay that price...yet. Check back with me in a month, though. I exist in fabric that moves with me, not against me, and I just might cave. This new normal is anything but and pretending like everything is totally fine is, well, totally exhausting. We are each in the midst of our own version of this trauma and it is necessary that we allow ourselves to feel whatever it is we are feeling. Sure, you can point to your left or right and tell me that someone, somewhere, has it way worse than I, you, or we. But that takes this pain away from me and I’d like to sit with it for a minute, thank you. You’re allowed to do that too.
I talked to my therapist via Telehealth today, another new “normal” I’m trying to get used to. We discussed how all this is going to change the way we exist with our thoughts and, as a consequence, change therapy. ‘Maybe we’ll shift to more radical acceptance instead of focusing only on change,’ she said. And with that, the nail was hit on its head. Radical acceptance is something I have been practicing, albeit imperfectly, for a little over a year now. Sitting with pain and allowing it to wash over me without trying to control it has not been easy; it has taken discipline and practice. We humans like to fix things that are broken. Unfortunately, sometimes things just break and denying that only prolongs and intensifies our suffering. The sooner we accept what has happened, what is happening, and what is going to happen, the more adept we will be at establishing an improved normal, not just a new one. Accepting a pandemic and all that comes with it is pretty radical, don’t you think? Again, not easy.
Yes, my friends, this does suck. We are reminded daily of an increasing death toll and we are no longer able to do the things we do to care for ourselves and others. Many of us are celebrating Passover and Easter in far less company than we are accustomed. Seders have been prepared without elders and children joining together, the Easter Bunny will be searching for things to fill baskets at the eleventh hour, churches and temples will be empty, and hams will be baked for audiences far too small to consume them in one sitting. But still, the yellow forsythias have burst into life and the magnolia trees are starting to bloom. Birds are making their nests and last night I could hear a pack of coyotes howling in the woods behind my house. Life is going on all around us after all, just as it should. With the help of chocolate, cocktail hours on Zoom, and appropriately priced yoga pants, we will come through this moment of uncertainty, chaos, and grief. It is up to us, now, to decide how we will come through it all. A new life is being born, how apropos of the season. Let’s not screw this up.
Aww. Love you too! Miss you tons😊
Love you