Love in the Time of Corona: How to Love on Yourself and Others During a Global Pandemic
I haven’t published a blog in a really long time. I’ve written and I’ve reflected, but so much has happened in my life over the last six months that every time I try and muster the courage to start narrating my story, I come short of what I want to say.
Then we started to hear about this virus. A virus that was supposed to be like the flu, was somehow shutting down a global power on the other side of the Earth. Then it traveled here and life as we know it has come to a full halt. For some, lucky to be blessed by Lady Fortune, this is the first time something of this magnitude has interrupted their lives. For others, this is another day in the game of life.
My therapy sessions with clients, already emotionally intensive, have become more so. My conversations with friends carry a new tone filled with vulnerability, fear, anxiety, and grief. I’m not going to say anything new or original in this post, but my hope is, in a sea of scary news and amazing memes-LIKE THE DOG WITH THE CRAZY EYES. Never mind, I’ll just show you-
Hahaha! It’s soooo good, right? Anywoof, in the midst of all of this chaos, my hope is to offer some easy things to focus and reflect on while we’re waiting for the all-clear.
Let Yourself Grieve
Grief is a complicated ass emotion. So much so, that we’ve popularly reserved it only for physical loss of some kind- the death of a person or the end of a relationship. However, grief is an emotion that we’re constantly feeling. The older I’ve gotten and the more work I do with my clients, the more apparent it is that grief is as essential of emotion as fear and happiness. I would say the potential for grief is present whenever a decision is to be made because you’re losing the possibility of another circumstance. This is hard for us, especially for a generation whose mission is around passion and purposefulness. As millennials, we’re always striving to “make the right decision” and fearful of what happens if we don’t. Grief helps us process that losing alternatives is something healthy (you can’t do a million things at once) and something we have to accept in order to move forward with direction in our lives.
Grief and I have formed an intimate relationship over the last several months. It’s forced me to stop myself in my relentless pursuit of forward mobility and sat me down to show me that I needed to take a beat back and recognize the biggest loss I faced- my sense of self. Since then, I’ve been letting grief do more of the driving and have let myself process and accept the reality that life had to look very different in order to find myself again. Right now, we’re all experiencing loss of some level. For some, it is a loss of income or financial security. For others, it is the loss of developing relationships due to the lack of physical contact we can have. For others, sadly, it is the loss of health and in extreme cases, loss of life. We are experiencing grief as a people for all the plans and hopes we had for interacting with each other and with the institutions that have become a part of our normal lives.
My encouragement would be to allow yourself to grieve during this season. We’ve been encouraged by social media and other outlets, rightfully so, to focus on distraction and creating as much normalcy as we can. However, it’s ok to think about the wedding you had to postpone, or the date you may never have because even though these decisions were made for the greater good, they are decisions that carried the weight of an alternative reality we may never experience.
Some good questions to start with when processing grief:
What losses am I currently experiencing?
What losses am I fearful of experiencing?
How do I need to heal from this loss?
How do I create room for experiencing what I can gain from this season?
What do I need this grief to show me?
Let Yourself Create
So, not even going to lie, being quarantined alone has caused me to spend a lot of time on my phone. I know, I know, DON’T JUDGE ME. The constant barrage of bad news has been a total bummer but there’s something I should have been equally scarred by that has actually become a nice interruption in my day. It’s the TIK TOK you guys! No shame, I’ve become low-key obsessed with watching celebrities do the same dance routines and trends over and over again. There’s this one cute little trend of people kissing their best friends to see what happens. Even though I’m pissed these children aren’t practicing social distancing I’m also like “but are they going to date now”. Real footage of me watching these videos:
Even though a lot of these videos are silly, the downloads to the app since this pandemic struck our country have skyrocketed. I think it speaks to something that we all need right now- a sense of creativity. Being creative allows for several things. It allows us to enter “flow”, which is essentially being so engrossed with the activity we’re engaged in that we lose our sense of time and awareness. If you want to learn more about flow, you can watch the awesome TED talk here. <——-See Ted Talks and Tik Toks- your girl is cultured AF.
Creativity also allows for a sense of control. When I sit down to write, color, or put together a puzzle, I’m in control of what I want the final outcome to look like. Having control in a season of uncertainty is necessary because it provides grounding which allows us to function in the present moment a little better.
So, put together a Lego set or order some canvases and acrylic paint and get to Van Goghing! Even if your work of art looks like hot garbage, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to create and get lost in the moment instead of focusing on moment to moment. I made this yesterday, and frankly, I’m really happy with how it turned out. Jk…this is way better than what I can paint. How did they get that copyright to look so good?
Regardless of what you do, give yourself a break from social media and the news and focus on what you can create for yourself today.
Let Yourself Dare and Dream
If you allow yourself to grieve the losses you’re currently experiencing and heal through those, you create opportunity and room for the potential gains you can make, especially once this is all over. Which-PAUSE- can we focus on that for a second? THIS WILL BE OVER one day. This will be over one day and life will find a way to get back to normal eventually. This is temporary. Okay…PLAY…
I’ve allowed myself a healthy and limited daily dose of fantasizing about what I’ll be able to do once this is all over. From the small things like going to Trader Joe’s and getting some dank ingredients for a dinner party to bigger things like meeting new people and making plans for travel. Allowing myself to dream of the things I’ll be able to do once our health system has a better handle on this gets me excited for the preparation I need to engage in to do some of those things and therefore feel more productive. Some of my clients and friends have dreamed about their ultimate “glow-ups”. Some of my clients and friends have thought about those conversations they didn’t have a chance to have face-to-face. My encouragement to myself and others has been to take this time to process and reflect on what you want to change in your life.
Think about how you want to look and feel and use this time to work towards that reality. Let yourself have those honest conversations now that people have the space to think and reflect. This season is naturally going to elicit fear. What if we took that fear and translated it into personal empowerment and boldness?
Let Yourself Do for Others
Lastly, a lot of people’s lives are going to be turned completely upside down after this. Jobs lost, lives lost, opportunities lost. I think it’s safe to say that this pandemic will clearly show how broken some of our systems are and how alone we actually are in terms of securing life and liberty in this country. I’ve seen horrible decisions be made as “leaders” have been using their mouthpieces to spread hate and fear. But I think there’s an opportunity for unity as a nation. Someone told me that in two days the Atlanta Food Bank raised almost a million dollars. These stories are not getting told as much and they definitely need to. Check in on your loved ones. Especially the ones that are living alone and can’t be with others. Donate money or resources if you can to small businesses and families in need. Make silly Tiktok videos and share your favorite recipes on social media.
We ARE going to get through this. So why don’t we look at the other side as our path for self-love, boldness, and strength?