Life Whiplash

There we were on the highway of life going 80 miles an hour. We were in our lane and had hands on the steering wheel. The back seat might have had kids or groceries or other shopping. We had a passenger seat that resembled a make shift office because we were so on the go and multi-tasking it seemed we were living out of our car most work days. Everything was going great and spring was on the horizon along with our ever full calendars promising more meetings, engagements, festivals, parties, etc. We were in our groove, navigating around everyone else on that highway of life when suddenly everything stopped. Nearly every car just went from 80 miles per hour to a standstill.

This is Life Whiplash

The energetic reaction to this has ricocheted around our minds, bodies, lives, families, work places, neighborhoods, communities, our nation, and the entire world in unique and magical and traumatic and life altering ways. That is truly mind blowing. We are living out an historical event.

This is Life Whiplash

I will share my perspective:  I went from teaching some weeks over 200 kids, teens, and adults in about 10 schools, day cares, and studios between Monday and Thursday to sitting at my desk on the evening of Thursday March 12^th with the news that schools had closed for 2 weeks. I remember taking a deep breath and was already trying to finagle how to move those classes and make them up as the school year was quickly nearing its last few months. Then it all fell apart when the governors announced the end of the school year and stay-at-home orders.

This is Life Whiplash

That was one of the many dark days of quarantine. I live alone. I went from an intense work week of interaction with mostly kids and offering inspiring programs to sitting in my house like a caged animal, pacing. There was panic, confusion, a fear like I’ve never experienced, and so much loss. I saw all those children’s faces, all that curriculum, all that had been scheduled disappear as if the road and my car had never been. It all went away.

This is Life Whiplash

There was also the slow realization over the weeks that passed by of how I identify with who I am and how that is deeply wrapped up in what I do. So if what I do is gone then …who am I now? I quickly put together Zoom classes, I reinvented what I could do. I tried to essentially push the car down the highway. It was exhausting and bore little fruit. Why? Because everyone else was likely feeling something like what I was feeling. Because parents suddenly either lost work or worked from home while becoming school teachers, cooks, care givers, and play mates for their children. And the parents were pushed into places they never imagined before. I know one dad who got up at 4:00 AM to start his office work before his son got up at 8:00. He then had to cook breakfast and get him online for school with a lot of dad’s help. Then in the afternoon there was getting his kid busy with activities so he might get some more work done before dinner and bedtime.

This is Life Whiplash

As I fell down this quarantine rabbit hole, I found myself in some bizarre mental spaces that led to lying on the dining room floor just to see a room in my house from a different perspective, dancing alone in the living room many times, sitting on my porch for hours staring out at the yard, and looking at my office day from an entirely new place. There is nothing to plan. There is nothing to look into the future to look forward to. That was likely where I fell into some terribly depressed days when I just cried big belly quaking sobs because it seemed like life didn’t just stop, it disappeared.

This is Life Whiplash

I wondered about the mental health of my students, of people who may not have the tools I have to dig out of despair and hopelessness. I have journaled every day to process my feelings. I have meditated and practiced online yoga with classes offered by Yogaville on Livestream. I have taught Zoom classes sometimes with one kid in the class and loved every minute of being able to connect with that kid one on one. That is a rare treat for both of us. And so begins the recovery from this pandemic and it begins with…

Finding the Silver Linings

I started to focus on not what was lost but what had been found. Greater connection with family and friends – how ironic. I held a weekly Zoom yoga class for my aunts, brothers, mom, and cousins with a visit time at the end that turned into a weekly family reunion. Such a blessing! I have had so much time with my dog and he is so much happier, his coat is even more colorful and vibrant. I have had time for writing poetry and painting. I have a whole new appreciation for nature, for friendships, for health, for freedom, and for the work I did and still do and may do again. Even as summer yoga camp has been green-lighted I am aware that that too could be taken away if virus numbers jump up. I am also aware that the highway we all were driving on before isn’t the same road and we are not the same people and we cannot drive like that again. Being busy does not mean you are successful, it means you forgot what’s important in life. We know what those things are now.

Find the Silver Linings

I watched alone in my house as kids came out on bikes and skate boards and filled the vacant streets of my neighborhood like it was 1978. Couples walking hand in hand, so much dog walking and a baby boom of puppy owners. I have seen my neighbors like I never saw them before because we are all home. We have learned the gift of a home cooked meal shared by a family sitting at the same table with no one rushing to get somewhere. I have felt that internal anxiety float away. I can sit with a friend in my yard and relax into hours of conversation because time is elastic, malleable, and expansive now.

Find the Silver Linings

I do not know and many of us do not know what next month or next school year looks like. I hesitate to make real plans and I have that Plan B in my back pocket just in case. In yoga we talk about the edge, about finding your edge in a yoga posture. Life brings us to edges too and it is when we hit that edge that we get a little squirmy, we can feel that what is happening is getting uncomfortable, maybe pain is already sinking in and our natural response is to pull back or should be. What this pandemic and the subsequent quarantine has shown us collectively as human beings is to sit on the edge and be with it. Some people will suffer, others will surrender, others will push causing great pain, and others will find distractions to avoid even acknowledging that the edge is right there. We all experience this life in our own unique way. Don’t judge, please do not judge how someone else is surviving this. When we surrender to the edge and experience Santosha, contentment in this moment, this very bizarre surreal moment of our collective history, something magical happens, the edge softens. The edge softens and becomes bearable enough that you relax into that contentment, into that being in the now, and you grow on a soul level in a profound way. This is why we cannot go back. There is no back to go to anyway. We are moving forward and that is defining itself, we are merely witnesses to the passing of these days and the cycle of this virus.

The question arises then for us to answer for ourselves – “What are you going into if you are not going back to?” Yeah, like if you let everything from before mid-March go and turn to face your future, how do you choose to define/ create/ imagine it?

This is Life Whiplash – Find the Silver Linings