If this year has provided us with nothing else, it has given us a chance to deeply look at our lives, goals, and decisions more closely. We have had more TIME than ever before to begin reflecting on designing our days with intention and healing our minds and bodies. We have had (in some cases) a lot less noise clouding our days and taking up our time. We have had to learn to juggle responsibilities which makes us more cognizant of how we want to spend our time, and we have hopefully all learned to be more grateful for what we have.
I have had to be very very precise about how I spend my time each day. Teaching remotely while managing my other responsibilities of being a mama and wife was overwhelming at first. I wanted to wear all of the hats and do it all perfectly. Guess what? You can’t do any of it perfectly–no matter how much or how little you have on your plate.
Accepting that was really hard. I hit some pretty dark places throughout these moments and began doubting myself. The work that I had done to manage my panic and clarify my decision making had truly gone to the wayside. I realized I was spending my time reading a lot about “What if?” and “What about this?” And my mind was mainly consumed with theories and “could be’s” from around the world. Summer arrived. I had more time to do just that–and it wasn’t healthy for anyone: myself, my family, or my friends!
It took a long time for me to wake up and begin thinking clearly about who I am, what’s going on in the world, and how I want to process and use the information we are being given. It’s a process that I will continue to fine-tune and work on each day, but if there is anything I do know, it’s that I have a lot of big goals for my family (I have always been goal oriented) and I cannot achieve them if I’m filling my space, heart, and mind with other people’s nonsense.
Regardless of what the world throws at me, the only thing I can do it keep my family as healthy and as safe as possible. When I walk back into work after a hiatus of sorts, I will stick to my convictions for myself and my loved ones and I will focus on what I can control. I’m letting this serve as a reminder to myself that I can do this. I can make it work, and like all of us our there we are all on a very different journey right now. What matters is that our journey helps us to be the best we can be while holding on to what makes us human: compassion.