The world seems pretty surreal right now, one minute your singing Taylor Swifts You Need to Calm Down and the next minute your counting how many meals you can make with what’s in your home.
Deep breathes my friends.
If you are like me you are feeling all the things right now. I’m pretty sure yesterday the panic receptors in my brain were firing at full speed. But by about 9 pm when my teenage father (you read that right, cause 60 is the new 19) texted me to tell me that he had canceled his trip, I was feeling a little calmer. Maybe it was the second glass of wine or 2 hours of watching robots in disguise battle, cause clearly giant robot aliens would be worse, right? right? That I started to think about what we can do, instead of what we can’t do
We can be kind to our neighbors, to our friends and even to the people on the internet we don’t agree with. We are all at a 10 on the stress scale.
We can do Yoga, lots of it. Trust me 45 minutes of Britney vs Justin Bulldog Yoga is what we all should be doing right now.
We can breathe.
We can snuggle our children and pet our dogs and watch bad robot movies.
We can love. Staying home is an act of love for our family, our community and our country.
We can cry. Really it’s ok.
We can reach out to everyone and anyone. I texted almost a dozen friends yesterday to check-in. I felt better after each text. Tomorrow I will text more. I will be a safe place for them and they for me, even if they don’t know it.
We can tell people we appreciate them. Yesterday I sent up smoke signals at work because even for a remote job things were quiet and a manager who I have little interaction with responded. I immediately sent her a message letting her know that her response mattered.
We can reassure each other that we are all getting lost in this rabbit hole right now.
We can read books and do puzzles and build Legos and watch too much TV.
We can share what we have. Some of our friends and neighbors haven’t been prepping like a crazy person since November 2016 (cause I have). Some of us likely have more than we need, we have full pantries and foods that our kids don’t like or want. We can share them, we can send them to food banks or schools.
We can trust our guts. It’s hard right now, if you aren’t comfortable don’t do it.
We can stop reading or watching the news. I promise you we can. We can instead watch everything on Disney +.
We can look to our leaders and we can be leaders. We can share what we are doing so that other people may do the same.
We can bake and cook and craft. Keeping your hands busy is an amazing way to calm your brain.
We can support small businesses who will be hurting.
We can share how we are helping our kids and our families through this.
We can work on those photo albums we always say we will get to or that scrapbook that has been left unfinished. We can start writing a novel.
We can pour a glass of wine and chat on skype or slack or zoom.
We can marvel at how amazingly connected the Internet has made us, even if just last week you ran around shouting “Facebook is the devil’s playground”
We can write again. We can connect. We can be better to each other. We can do hard things, even when it feels like we can’t and we can try to do them with a smile.
Leave a Reply