I have started and stopped this post countless times.
Not because I don’t know what to say, but because I don’t know how to say it. The ever-present critic of self-judgment keeps chiming in, giving its two cents when it’s not been requested.
Then a glance at my wall, where a symbolic writing hangs, points me in the right direction.
It reads, in part:
“Be calm, be still, but let yourself get wild and lost in a storm from time to time.”
And that’s it. I am lost. In an epic, once-in-a-century, unprecedented storm.
Did I just say that?
Did I just admit that I’m moving forward blindly?
I mean, aren’t we all?
Haven’t we all been scooped up by this cosmic force of the pandemic only to have everything we once knew as truth to be torn off its hinges?
Aren’t we all waiting with bated breath to see where we land when it decides to spit us out?
Then why are we acting like it’s all no-big-deal-I’m-good-you’re-good-at-least-we’re-still-standing? Everything about the world as we know it has been upended, yet we’re still making small talk.
Doing so with lips behind masks, distanced in a way that defies human interaction.
Personally, I’m waiting for the day when we can stop dressing up our grief in a shroud of resiliency. When it becomes socially acceptable to break down in tears at the mention of how damn hard this has been and all that we’ve lost.
Because just as a landscape can be forever shaped by Mother Nature, so too am I forever changed by this pandemic.
And I honestly cannot relate to anyone who is not.
So please forgive me if I don’t have time for small talk. If my smile doesn’t creep up from behind my mask to reach my eyes when I say “I’m good.”
I’m too busy figuring out which way is up, determining what I will make of all I’ve seen – and can’t un-see – from this catastrophe, all the while shielding my eyes from tears and the incessant rain that continues to fall.
That’s because if I’m going to be rocked by this eruption, you can bet your ass that surviving it is going to mean a lot more than just “still standing” on the other side.
It’s going to be emerging from the destruction to build a better future than was ever imagined before.
So if you find yourself lost in this storm, I wish you the courage to have faith in its transformational power.
There will be time again to be calm, be still.
But right now, you’re being shaped by the sharp rocks and broken glass that will return you – forever changed – to shore.