Thanksgiving under the COVID cloud?

What’s to be thankful for in 2020?

I have heard this comment many times during the last several months since the COVID crisis hit Canada and the rest of the world.

The ongoing threat of possibly getting COVID and becoming sick, having to the hospital, and dying! The absence of family and friends in our regular lives, added burdens of homeschooling, increase domestic violence, limited or no social gatherings, financial stress and strain for everyone, business going bankrupt, and the anxiety and strain on our mental health everyone is experiencing in some form.

Let’s face it, we cannot deny what’s happening around us. And we also cannot deny the impact in various forms, the COVID crisis is having on each of our lives. Everyone copes with stress in their own way. What could be stressful for one person may not have the same impact on someone else. If you think about it we’re just trying to do our best during these unprecedented times.

Is there something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving? Again this is an individual perspective and choice.

“Even the darkest hour has only 60 minutes” by Maurice Mandel

For some folks, these last seven months have felt like the ‘darkest hours’. In fact, it has been a reality for many of those who have lost a loved one or who are watching someone ill from COVID.

None of us is immune and although children may not seem to suffer from serious side effects, we don’t know the long-term effect on their bodies.

Let’s face it that’s a lot of stuff not to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

We do however have a choice. We do have a choice in how we react, how we respond, and what we retain during these stressful times. No matter what is happening in our lives we are responsible for our actions, non-actions, and what we say.

This is especially important as we find our own individual way to be thankful this Thanksgiving 2020.

I look around and I see my neighbours, friends, family, community, my country rallying around each other, helping each other, giving to each other during the last several months. Everyone has their own financial difficulties, some more so than others.

It’s the ripple effect of kindness and caring for someone we love, sometimes a stranger, to make their world or day a better place during the COVID crisis.

Those precious moments give us an opportunity to be thankful.

Reassuring, Sharing, and demonstrating for our children how to be safe, handle stress with their own self-care tools/strategies as lifelong skills teach them empowerment not just for dealing with the anxieties of today but for their entire lives. This is something to be thankful for in 2020.

If you don’t have any ideas about self-care tools and strategies perhaps the time has come to create your own self-care tool kit. Take a quick look at my TEDx (2015) talk about ‘ Tools to survive workplace bullying‘.

The strategies can be used anywhere and by anyone. The idea is to spark some creative thought in what works for you to help you feel less stressed in life. This is good for our mental health.

Thanksgiving is going to look different this year. This is something we cannot change. Create a Thanksgiving that is unique for 2020. Use your imagination and ask your children to use her imagination on how to make Thanksgiving 2020 fabulous.

Focus on what we can do.

We can’t have family or friends over for dinner but what we can do is make a nice dinner with the special items that remind us of the people who are not present this year.