Another week, another round of our new current reality being unpacked. How are you doing during this time?
For myself, it feels surreal, sometimes I find myself diving into deep sadness for all the things that are being lost, and in other moments I feel elated by possibility for a new world. I’m grieving my own loses, as I let go of certainty and step towards the unknown. Anxiety sweeps over me when I think about whether my business survive, or if I will be able to pay my bills, or keep my daughter fed and under shelter. Then I have these moments of clarity, in my meditations and in quiet moments, where I trust in something greater than my limited mind and I feel held and supported.
My grief then jumps to all the children, teens and adults who don’t feel safe in their own home and need school and work as a safeguard. I worry about how all our communities will change, how many businesses will close – business makes up our neighborhoods, communities and our collective gathering points. They bring us together and give us meeting points for feeling connected to the rhythms of our communities.
I worry about those at home, alone {or who feel alone} and are feeling the burden of their unkept fear as it sends them into anxiety and possibly panic attacks. How loneliness washes over them and pushes their minds into dark places and how that will affect their mental health – long term.
I think about how self-isolation is escalating the demand on our first responders and health care system and mental health might be the biggest global pandemic in the years to come.
I mourn our collective trusting of each other, I see how social distancing has made us scared of ourselves and of others. I worry about the impact of this on our nervous systems, on our pain bodies, and how we will carry the pain of this forward. Pain either gets transformed – if we’re conscious and aware enough to do our inner work – or it gets projected and mutates into blame, shame, social distancing, us versus them behavior and an overall sense of distrust.
I pray for those who are sick and the ones who are carrying for them.
I’m concerned about the global economy and how shutting down our commerce will effectively break many businesses (big and small), and people who thought they had secure careers find themselves out of work. I think about the people working on the front lines, health care workers, essential service and those carrying the weight of keeping essential services going. I wonder if they are succumbing to fear for putting themselves out there on the front lines. I want desperately to be of service, to be in the hospitals supporting and helping and yet (as many of us) relinquishing control by doing the only thing I can in this moment, self-isolating.
Yet, I rally in our rebirth. In our potential to create a new earth, to see the ways in which we will come out of this and how one by one we will pick each other up, offering a hand of support in anyway we can. How hugs will be the new currency of abundance. The measure of how much we will grow collectively will depend greatly on our capacity to do our own inner work, to excavate the fear and walk through the pain in our own lives. In Michael Stone’s book Yoga for a World out of Balance he write’s; ‘for peace to emerge, we must respect the rights of other people, species and living things. Respect requires not only honest appraisal but also the ability to allow ourselves to be changed by that which we are experiencing. Peace begins by not turning away from suffering.’
The truth is, I know so little. I share my perspectives in order to create connection and possibly help someone out there. But I hope and pray that we will find a way to change something deep within us that lends to the greater healing of our planet and humanity. I feel that we should use this time to heal our anxiety around slowing down and to learn how to create peace in our minds and bodies. Because those who are in positions of being on the front lines and unable to slow down will need us to hold them.
Remember that you have control over your thoughts and that your thoughts don’t control you. That this is a gift, even though it doesn’t feel like it – you get to choose how you’re going to transform your suffering into something kinder and with more wisdom.
To remember that we are all trying to find our way and no one has it figured out. To share grace and ease and to get quiet enough to listen to the whispers of knowledge percolating through the earth and our bodies.
Above all, let’s choose to be generous with our love and kind with our words.
Love, Noelle