No matter what you’ve been through this past year+, you have experienced trauma. The profound change in our daily routines, coupled with fear and scarcity and aloneness and loss in every sense, has had an effect on our bodies and psyches that will have ripple effects for our entire lives.
I find myself activated and frustrated by the assumption that things will “return to normal” and that we might just jump back into the river of life as we knew it as if a global pandemic and a full interruption of life never happened.
Our nervous systems need time to emerge from the contraction of this past year - we have been worried, nervous, stressed, alone, lonely, separated. Our familiar ways of comforting ourselves vanished in the period of shutdown, and we were forced to find new ways of being. We may have had different ways of doing so, but we all had to protect ourselves, and it stands to reason that a return to a new reality won’t be as easy as we think.
Let’s learn how to be gentle together. Let us embrace a gentle return.
//don’t rush
By this I mean, go slowly - in every sense of the word. Move your body slowly as you ready for work, move gently through your to-do list. Drive more slowly. Take every new step - the commute, the coffee shop visit, the school drop off, the entrance into your office, with a deep breath and a slower pace. With each return, we have the opportunity to remind our bodies that we are still safe, even if we are no longer tucked away.
//create new rhythms
I’ve been thinking about this Return as a New Thing. I have a tradition of buying myself a new, handmade coffee mug when I start a new job. I love ceramics, and I love the transition to a new rhythm. A handmade mug and a morning coffee is a perfect anchor in a sometimes soul-sucking office environment. My coffee anchors me to the artist, to the clay, and to something outside of the world of email. It is a rhythm that holds my morning in place. I bought a new mug for this new life, this post-pandemic life, even though I am in the same office, in the same chair. It feels important to mark this change. Maybe you can think of ways to mark the change for yourself.
//clear the air, clean the space
Returning to your workspace or your old routine may feel like walking into a time capsule. Just today I threw away a sticky note from last March and removed 2020 calendars from my corkboard. I am cleaning out a cup of water that gathered film and dirt and grime. Our spaces, just like our bodies, need time and space. Offer your space some gentle cleaning, some sorting and throwing away. Wipe down surfaces, spray the air, or play a new album all the way through. Find ways to refresh the air and wipe the slate clean.