COVID: ONE YEAR ON

This week a year ago, life became forever bookmarked with Covid impacting our lives.

I remember this sense of innocence clearly as it was to be my husband’s 50th the following weekend. The venue and caterer were booked; friends were flying in from around the country and the finishing touches to what promised to be a memorable night were being made.

But early on the preceding Saturday morning two friends had called advising us to cancel. One was a senior public health servant and the other a veteran News reporter. Both were telling us that things were getting serious really quickly and that by Wednesday gatherings of over 100 people would not be possible.

I clearly recall our sense of incredulousness as we sent out what seemed like such an over reactive email postponing the 50th. By Wednesday however social gathering bans were indeed in place. By Saturday, shelves were stripped bare of toilet paper and by early the following week my daughter, husband and I were rearranging our house to accommodate two home offices and home schooling.

Life as we knew it was suddenly and irrevocably changed.

A year on and we’ve now all settled into our ‘new normal’ of daily Covid news reports, face masks and QR tracking codes greeting us at entrance doors. Compared to other countries we know that we are blessed with the ‘bubble’ that our island status, herd-like national compliance and cohesive government preventative policies are providing.

On the outside life is returning to some semblance of its former self. On the inside however I think that it’s a more complicated affair.

There were so many ‘firsts’ last year that more often than not it was our survival instincts and adrenalin that got us through these moments. The collective crisis galvernised our sense of purpose around keeping ourselves and our families safe and being grateful for the things that provided us with a sense of security and comfort. The enforced lockdowns saw us appreciating commonplace things through a new lens: sunrises and sunsets, family dinners, Facetime with friends, walks in nature…

However, as time went by, our internal moral fatigue seems to have been growing and for many of us now is manifesting in different ways – both subtle and debilitating. What was initially fuelled by the myriad of tiny decisions about remembering to wash our hands, wipe down shopping trollies, take ours masks with us and not automatically go to shake hands etc has now morphed into what many are experiencing as an underlying tiredness or ‘flatness’ around things that used to bring us joy.

New Year’s resolutions went awry a lot earlier than normal; routines around diet and exercise are no longer carried out with the same zest as before; overwhelm and procrastination seem to be constant companions and the volume switch on our negative self-talk level seems to be a little louder than before.

So why is this so and what can be done about it?

Whether we acknowledge it or not we’re all grieving on some level aspects to our lives that may never be the same again and this mourning for what was never fully appreciated at the time takes a lot of processing.

We didn’t leave a dance floor all hot and sweating thinking ‘this is the last time I’ll ever do this’…..

We didn’t all shuffle out of a concert hall shoulder to shoulder saying ‘and the fat lady has sung’……

We didn’t crowd onto public transport in a foreign city realising that ‘this is the last stop….ever’

We’re not clocking the subtle sadness that permeates our psyche when we see an image from life ‘pre Covid’. We’re not necessarily aware of the internal sighing of our soul with the news bulletin Covid chorus of stories. There’s so many trigger points throughout the day that often go unnoticed.

When we can’t touch the edges of the rim of our foreseeable future, we lose sight of what’s possible and when this happens our motivations, our sense of optimism and our self of self- determination become jaded and tarnished. And this manifests itself outwardly in a low level malaise, a restlessness, a discontent, a short fuse….

If you’re relating to any of this then the simple and most effective antidote is to first acknowledge these feelings or actions (or inactions). By creating an awareness around what we’re experiencing we are able to start the journey towards a more wholehearted place of being. The travelling companions that we need to reach this destination are self-compassion and self -kindness. These are the only passports that will get us there and luckily for us access to them is instant and free of charge.

As the weekend beckons, ask yourself what acts of self compassion, kindness or love have you got planned for yourself? How do you intend to be gentle and forgiving with yourself? How could you create the space to enable some time for reflection and contemplation so that you can potentially grieve all that’s been lost or forever changed.

In order for us to build up a crystal clear picture of how we fit into this ‘new normal’ we need to embrace rituals and routines that support us and nurture us.

So give yourself some quiet time and space to create acceptance and awareness and once this has happened then the little inner voice of your Post Covid self can start to say once more ‘I wonder….’