COVID-19

This is long. Buckle up. 

I, like pretty much everyone else on the planet right now, am finding it hard to reconcile my feelings about the current state of the world. 

On one hand, I am currently sitting in my cozy little house, with my healthy husband and two healthy children. We are both still employed. We have food in our refrigerator, pantry, and freezer. We help to run a farm. We are fairly food secure. We have electricity, heat, running water, internet, and a modest savings account. I have watched the entire first season of Stranger Things with my son. I got my record player hooked up after it being disconnected for months. I ordered seeds and started building a fence. I’ve chased my geese back into their pen so many times I can’t count anymore. We are so wildly lucky to live where we live and to live the way we do. I am one of the most fortunate people on the whole planet. 

On the other hand, there is so much anxiety, concern, distress, grief, and upset running through my mind. If I don’t stay busy, then I start to spiral into nervousness and sadness. I can hardly look at Facebook right now because it causes me so much stress… endless stories of dying people, an international epidemic of untold proportions, calls for help which I am largely unable to answer, and the general upset of everyone I know. The grocery stores are emptying for no reason other than people’s greed and panic. Our government is doing an absolute shit job of handling this. Thousands of people are dying. I can’t even go have coffee at my parent’s house right now. There is a lot of stress over whether or not our jobs will stay stable. Should I go grocery shopping? Should I drop off these rolls I just made to my neighbor? Am I sick? How long has it been since I saw someone outside of my nuclear family? Were they sick? The questions and worries are seemingly… endless. 

I am calling this photograph “COVID-19.” I think it perfectly encapsulates how I am feeling… stuck at the house, but determinedly hopeful. The things which are keeping me grounded right now are my children, my husband, my little yard which is getting all of the attention it should have gotten for the last six years, my three dogs who deserve the same, creating art, baking, improving myself, writing, photographing, homeschooling my children which has been a dream of mine for so long… and yet we are stuck in a bubble that doesn’t seem to have an end date. I wonder all the time how this is going to flake out, how it’s going to end… if it’s going to end. I wonder how many people will die. I wonder if we will get sick. I wonder if anyone I know will die. I wonder if our hospitals in Maine can handle it. I wonder if my medical professional family members will be okay. I wonder and agonize and wonder and hope all day, every day. When will it end?

Of course, we will never be back to normal. What is normal? How could that ever be? We will lose so many people. Some will be people we know and love.  But, my deepest hope is that what is grounding me… my garden, my children, my animals, my art… that those things grow for everyone. That perhaps each of you are doing something with your time that you might not otherwise be doing. I hope that you come out of this as a more empathetic, kind, well-informed, and beautiful human. Perhaps you will learn how to live more harmoniously with nature, with the land. Perhaps you will learn survival skills. Perhaps you will rekindle relationships with your partner or your children or your dogs that you haven’t had time for. Perhaps you will take stock of your gratitude. Of your blessings, as much as I hate that phrase. 

I sat at my kitchen table today and cried a bit over the state of the world, my lack of control over essentially everything, and the loss of many hopes and dreams for not only myself, but so many other people. It would be a lie, and a grave one at that, to say that I’m seeing only positive here. But still, I hold out hope that we’re going to see the environment improve, that we’ll see ourselves improve, that our communities will come out of this for the better… and that as many of us as we can make it through this. I deeply hope that this is a paradigm shift for the better for the world, if not just for me.