I don’t know who needs to hear this.
I don’t know who needs to read this.
I don’t know who needs to have a hug or meet up for a little chit chat.
It is ok to be disappointed in how our lives are right now.
It is ok to be upset that events are cancelled, rescheduled, or indefinitely postponed.
It is ok to crave getting out, going to places other than your house, to seeing people other than those that are normally living within the walls of your home.
It is ok to be happy that you haven’t had to interact with a ton of other people.
It is ok to want to be able to send your kids to in person school.
It is ok to feel it’s best for your family to do school virtually for the time being.
It is ok to be afraid of a virus.
It is ok to not be afraid of a virus.
It is ok to wake up every morning hoping the last five months have been a dream (or nightmare rather).
It is ok to feel all of the things and not know how to deal with them.
It is ok to have days where you feel like you are not handling things well.
Because here’s the thing – this is not anything any of us have been through before. For maybe one of the first times in our lives, none of our elders can sit there and say, “Well, when we raised kids during a pandemic that shut down the country, we…”
It is so easy to log into Facebook and see a million different opinions – many from people who do not even have children in their homes – on how you should be living life, raising children, and making choices on how to feel about everything surrounding the virus.
It was such opinions and judgements that led me to distance myself from so many of my friends, to question decisions my husband and I had made for our family, and to feel pretty terrible about myself.
With social media, it is easier than ever to post your opinion, even if it is based in research, and yet to hurt someone who doesn’t share your opinion based on their own research. There are a million different ways to raise our kids and we all have to decide what is the best choices for our families and our well being.
I know it is hard to understand, but for some of us, the virus is not our biggest fear. Isolation is bringing out dark thoughts and fears and the virus pales in comparison to this.
I know it is hard to understand, but for some of us, the virus is our biggest fear. We have high risk individuals in our homes and families that may not be able to survive if they were to become ill.
But if we are to teach our children anything from this experience, we can teach them compassion and empathy. We can teach them that our worlds are complex. We can teach them that everyone has different things they are dealing with everyday. That our fears are not all the same. That our worries are not all the same. That we are complex individuals with complex needs.
We can teach our children to not judge someone just because they have made different choices than us. We can teach them to listen and to relate. We can teach them sensitivity and that shaming and bullying comes in many forms and that just because you feel justified in a supposed truth does not mean that your words won’t hurt others.
We can teach our children to be kind, smart, and forgiving. We can teach them that there are viruses out there that harm, but we don’t have to be that virus. We can choose to heal each other through understanding and empathy.
We have all made choices the last several months. Let us continue to choose kindness.