Why didn't I know they were in my bed?
Because I was downstairs sitting on the couch. I NEEDED my husband to hold me and talk to me.
Our conversation:
Me: "Why do I keep catastrophizing? It doesn't make sense."
Mitch: "Because so many things you used to count on are not reliable anymore, so it makes you expect that other things you count on will explode, too.
1) Your teaching job that used to be steady - in the air and changing.
2) School for the kids - blew up.
3) Daycare - over.
4) Food at the grocery store - you don't know if it's there anymore.
5) Toilet paper - it used to just be there & you never thought about it.
6) Boring church every week for 2 hours - POOF! Gone!
And that's just to name a few, so now you begin to believe that other things that have been steady in your life that you never used to think about could at any moment go away, too."
Mitch simply held me and talked with me and I started to feel better. Just talking about it--talking about the way COVID-19 has changed everything, and we haven't even lost a loved one to it, like others have.
When I came upstairs to fall into my pillow and mattress and couldn't because I saw the kids there instead, I stopped.
This sight showed me that what I was feeling tonight is exactly what my kids are feeling - the need for reassurance.
Right now everything is NOT okay.
Right now all the things that you and your kids used to count on feels unstable. So without living in denial of reality, if you can truthfully choke out these words, remember that SOMEONE in your family NEEDS TO HEAR THIS RIGHT NOW:
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY.
If that is not a true statement for you, don't say it, or remember that you could add something to it to make it true, like:
"Everything is going to be okay, BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO FIND A WAY."
Or "BECAUSE I'LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU."
Or "BECAUSE WE CAN DO THIS."
Or "BECAUSE WE CAN MAKE THIS FUN."
Or "BECAUSE WE ARE PROBLEM SOLVERS."
Maybe you need a different phrase to start shifting to the positive:
"There's no one else I'd rather be quarantined with than you guys."
WHATEVER it is that you sense the need to say, please SAY IT. Sometimes the more you say something that you have a hard time choking out, the more it has the potential to become true. SO PLEASE. For YOU. For anyone around you that you care about. Start choking out the words that maybe even you need to hear. Start saying the things you need to believe in, in order to shift your own focus - to start lifting the heavy burden of darkness off of your shoulders. Start saying the things you need to say that will help you shine light on and help you to live in and enjoy today.
All we have is today anyway. And with that sobering thought, let me give a shout out to some of you.
I am ALL ABOUT kids and childhood development and education--my oldest kids were all reading before the age of 3. But as much as I love education, there is no way in H*** that I'm homeschooling my kids right now. For those of you who have tried making a schedule, who have tried finding resources, who have worked for normalcy in these very not-normal circumstances, I am so freaking PROUD of you. Keep rocking it! You are still thinking from your frontal lobe and you are not in base survival mode just yet. That's an AMAZING PLACE to be in the middle of a world crisis. Just remember that as you go in to another week of this (even if you felt like you failed on the first round), you are the kind of person the world needs more of right now - you are innovating. You are creating. That's the kind of thing that perpetuates the human race forward and out of the darkness. Not everyone can do that under normal circumstances and certainly not everyone can do that in a crisis.
I'm a teacher, and I'm not quite able to do that right now. I have kids with trauma - our lives changed dramatically after we adopted, and under normal circumstances, my trauma babies are still children with "food issues". Issues that literally can control their every thought and our every day. So let's focus now on how something like Corona-virus, quarantine, and rood rationing or sudden dietary restrictions might affect my kids who already have food issues. Let's just say that on days 1 and 2 of this experience I already had to reach out to my support group for assistance and help. The most positive way I can view this situation is that it's an opportunity to have more intensive therapeutic practice with the skills we've already been working hard to teach and develop for my kids who literally (and for an extended period of their lives) used to not know where their next meal was going to come from. Unfortunately that reality that we're all now stressing about with the grocery store crisis used to be my adopted children's EVERY DAY situation. So hoarding food, playing with food, obsession about food, asking about food, hovering in the kitchen all the day long, wasting food, making 'food stands' without permission to sell our food during the quarantine, these are all the things I am focusing on and trying to help my kids move past. I have to address these basic human needs therapeutically before my kids can think about reading and writing again. And that's okay - everyone is at their own level on this pandemic journey - the GOAL though, is to keep as many of us out of crisis mode as possible.
So friends - it's hard. For many or most of us, we also have other life stressors happening in addition to the COVID-19 stress - finances, other health issues, accidents, fill in the blank. But if we're going to change what we can currently control, let's address our deeper needs, our kids' needs, and our friends' needs by shining some light with whatever we have left to muster. Reassure each other that there is reason to have hope and belief in a brighter day for all of us. Maybe someday we'll get back to knowing a life that we used to know just a few weeks ago, or maybe we will get to a reality that is similar to what we used to know if we can believe these things:
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY.
WE ARE GOING TO GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER.
WE ARE GOING TO SEE BETTER DAYS.
WE CAN DO THIS.
WE ARE ALREADY DOING THIS.
WE ARE STRONG.
WE HAVE GOT THIS.
Please - JUST SAY IT and remember that if we can get through today, we can also get through tomorrow, too.
In this with you.
Love,
D.Jo
