2020, a year most of us will remember with dread. A year that stood still, and felt relentless. For myself it became rapidly overwhelming, and increasingly I began to scrutinise everything; how I was performing as a mother, how good of an educator I was, how alone I felt I was becoming and cut off from the outside world, which I realised had started before the pandemic had begun.
Not long before the coming pandemic I had been really unwell, for a sustained period of time, and ended up being admitted to hospital in excruciating pain, and severe labrynthitis, which was to last months and months after I had been discharged, and I still live with significant difficulties as a result of the severe infection. I had been here before, an ear infection that migrated into the mastoid section of my skull, requiring IV antibiotics to clear it up, my body has never dealt with infection well, the thought of catching Covid terrified me. Would I become another statistic? Would my partner and children be left without me? How would they cope? My children would have to be separated from the family and go to their father, would he let them stay in touch? My mind raced constantly in the background, whilst trying to juggle four children that were getting cabin fever, and trying to assist my partner so she could work through the chaos. Her anxiety about work was high, how can I ease this anxiety for her? She’s worried about retaining her job, whilst struggling with the workload, the unsuitable arrangement of a camping table acting as a makeshift desk in the living room, praying that the WiFi will hold out for the day, which it rarely ever did. I needed to make this work, yet I was struggling to hold it all together. This was what groundhog day felt like, it was excruciating.
Days felt like weeks, and weeks felt like years, yet we finally began to emerge from this nightmare, step by step, or perhaps dipping toes in unchartered waters would be a more accurate way to describe how it felt navigating this new world. The people outside appeared to be celebrating this new found freedom, yet here we were, still shell shocked, still unsure, still fearful of what lied ahead. How safe would the schools be? Would others still abide by the procedures put in place to protect ourselves and others? How would we even begin to operate outside of our little safety bubble? It was a minefield, constant anxiety and second guessing every move, but we made it. Don’t get me wrong, we still have significant anxiety, particularly around social situations, the schools and such, but they ebb and flow with the time, the seasons, the people who who we chose to be around or perhaps not so much any more. This isn’t a constructive way to live our lives however, its not conducive to a happy life, or healthy relationships, to be living in constant fear, so we chose to go on, steadily rather than full steam ahead though.
We often see so much negativity surrounding the year 2020 and onwards, the tongue in cheek memes on the internet, the angry and emotive news reports detailing the fallout since the pandemic began, finger pointing, blaming various Government members for particular failures. It’s not going away any time soon, and we will have to learn to live with it, but let’s not carry the negativity. It’s easier said than done, I know this on a personal level. I still find myself mulling over things said and done by those around me, that irked me so much at the time, and I still hold onto, perhaps because in the moment, those things were easy to latch onto, easy to harbour resentment, easy to judge quickly and react with overly misplaced emotion. I found myself judging other parents particularly, I judged their decisions, I judged their actions, I was jealous perhaps in some cases, and others I was really frustrated with what I thought of as immature, irresponsible and selfish decisions. But who was I to judge really? I don’t have to dig too deep to uncover my own ‘failings’ and misgivings. I am in no way perfect and nor should I be free from judgement either. Its not something I am proud of, my judgements, but in order to move past them I have to own them, and look inside of myself to reason why it affected me so much in the first place. I am sure there could be a whole essay on that in the first instance, but for now, I move on to gratitude.
Gratitude. I am grateful for the lockdown. I am grateful for the lessons it taught me, and the bonds that were forged despite the fraughtness and angst of the relentless period of incarceration in the home that carried our fledgling family. We BECAME family in those moments, we became the ‘Pride Family’, creating our own Pride School, with our own rules, our own design, our own priorities and responsibilities formed and shared. We cemented ourselves and formed roots so strong, that it would take one hell of a storm to un-tether them. We found new, resourceful ways of living, we explored new foods, new crafts, new activities and games.
The children in particular became more and more creative and appreciative of the things we had at hand, things we could create or design ourselves too. I don’t need to wonder too much to come to the conclusion that we would not be in this position would we not have been forced to appreciate our small fortunes and treasures. We tried to rely as little as possible on technology outside of lesson times, and the children have remained less and less interested in it to this day, you can’t imagine the joy this gives me. Watching them and their imagination come to life has been one of the most valuable things I am privileged to be able to witness, and lock-down gifted me with that. It gifted me in so so much, so much time I would have never had with them, hell as it was at times, we navigated it with determination to improve ourselves each day and learn from the yesterdays.
I don’t want the post to turn into a post about my parenting vs your parenting-esque post, as this was not my intention, so I want to return to the lessons I learned. Overall, I learned that I will never stop learning and that is OK. Hear that, it’s OK. It’s also OK to get it wrong, and learn from it.
I guess overall, this post is for me to move on, to move past and continue to strive for the best, despite the occasional wave or two that might be a little rougher than most. I need to congratulate myself and others for surviving and getting past, we really did our best and that’s all that counts.
Me, Myself and Who am I? 