Good morning friends! How are you holding up? Two weeks ago today was the last day I went about my normal life. How about you?
I've started jotting down likes and learns on my planner each day. It's a fun exercise to train my mind to find the positives, and to see the lessons the pandemic is bringing. It's pretty easy to get pulled into the sadness and panic of it all. I mean, the world is on fire - people are hurting, and all of the systems we took for granted are crumbling. It's undeniably a shit show of epic proportions. While I want to be informed, and I certainly feel the gravity of this situation, it doesn't help anyone if I dwell in that. Likes and learns is one way of helping me to refocus. Here are my likes and learns from the past few days:
Likes:
"The Line" podcast and "alnwithin" IG account. Ashley Wood is a psychic medium who I have followed for a while. She has been a light through all of this and has such interesting views on the pandemic and our changing world. She called what is happening now "a sacred dismantling". I really love that. I've had a few sacred dismantlings in my life and I bet you have too. While really painful and scary, looking back on them, they really helped me grow and evolve, and they were some of my greatest gifts. I believe this pandemic will be too.
That this is happening in early spring and we have the opportunity to spend more time outside observing nature coming back to life. I don't think I have been so observant in past springs.
Learns:
I can stay "busy" no matter WHAT the situation - even when forced to stay home and cancel all plans. Still going 100mph. Scott points this out to me because he is NOT a busy person ;-). My busyness mostly serves to take me out of the moment and makes me hyper-focused on tasks, which is not always the best way to spend my time. I'm going to be more aware of that, and more intentional with my time. Getting stuff done is fine and good. But constantly running from one task to the next is not so fine and good.
We humans are very clever and helpful. I have seen some really sweet ways that people are stepping up to help each other and it warms my heart. I love how people are coming together to donate masks they have laying around in the garage, and making masks for healthcare workers. A retired nurse in our neighborhood posted on NextDoor that if you have any masks you have purchased (like for cleaning out the garage and such), that she would come by and pick them up on your porch and take them to a local hospital. We had a few to give. And JoAnn Fabrics, among others, have posted instructions and a video on how to make masks for local healthcare workers. They are even HANDING OUT FREE SUPPLIES CURBSIDE to make them! Wow! My parents and grandparents lost their homes and all of their belongings in an F5 tornado in 1965. While undoubtedly a traumatic experience, the stories we grew up hearing were the stories of how people came together to help them. I hope that will also be the legacy of this pandemic - how we all stepped up to help each other. How love prevailed.
I'll close with this from Patricia Garza Pinto FB page (another Like!):
Message from the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers:
"As you move through these changing times... be easy on yourself and be easy on one another. You are at the beginning of something new. You are learning a new way of being. You will find that you are working less in the yang modes that you are used to.
You will stop working so hard at getting from point A to point B the way you have in the past, but instead, will spend more time experiencing yourself in the whole, and your place in it.
Instead of traveling to a goal out there, you will voyage deeper into yourself. Your mother's grandmother knew how to do this. Your ancestors from long ago knew how to do this. They knew the power of the feminine principle... and because you carry their DNA in your body, this wisdom and this way of being is within you.
Call on it. Call it up. Invite your ancestors in. As the yang based habits and the decaying institutions on our planet begin to crumble, look up. A breeze is stirring. Feel the sun on your wings."
Wishing you sun on your wings today - a beautiful 60 degree spring day full of SUNSHINE and hope.