I noted to a new friend last night, that my last entry was June of 2020. So much has happened in that time, that I’m not sure I’ve fully processed all that has happened. It has taken me this long to feel like writing again.

I think at the time of that last post, we were still in our pandemic lockdown. Riots were taking place to bring to the attention of our citizens, the injustices of the Black community. So many other issues were spotlighted at this time – the inequity in our educational system, the lapses in our healthcare system, and the hate crimes against Asians, Jews and Blacks. What ugliness used to be hidden from us, festered and boiled over to reveal that white robes were no longer the singular sign of hate designed to instill fear.

I am not the only person to lose a family member or more to illness in this time. Thankfully, those loved ones are no longer in pain, even if we still grapple with their absence.

And yet, this pandemic continues. I feel it is draining my soul.

When I hear of the mass resignation, the lack of nurses, teachers, bus drivers, wait staff, I get it. I think it is the accumulation of stress from the job, stress from the pandemic, stress of family life – finances, health and being confined for an extended time – has finally reached it boiling point. When the pot boils, the water escapes as steam, or bubbles up, roiling over the edge of the pot and you are left with only a fraction of what you started with. You will never get that back. But you need more water for that pot – our souls, if you will. It will take slow and steady steps to find the faucet and get more water – more life for your soul.

Your mind and body work the same way everyday, gaining the energy that feeds those parts of you, but the soul, that needs more – beauty, kindness, poetry, and spiritual hugs that only your family and friends from hundreds of miles away came give you on a video chat.

It’s easy for me to say now, looking back to March of 2020, the lockdown made me anxious and feeling lost. The technical miracle of video chatting brought me closer to the pre-pandemic me. Even with the overloading of this technology today, I can still appreciate the virtual Rotary meetings, the chit chat with my crochet friends, and most of all the creative exchange and support I get from my writer and poetry groups.

As we start this third year of masks, social distancing and vaccines, I, like everyone else am feeling the burnout from this pandemic. I try to remind myself that with the Spanish Flu, which also lasted a couple years, we have so much more to be thankful for. We have technology to stay informed and connected. How many people in 1918 -1920 wrote a letter to a family member to tell them of the death of a loved one, only to have the letter returned because the addressee had died as well?

I just wanted to share with you that you are not alone. I struggle everyday to feel the way I used to, but, I now know that I am a different person than I was just two years ago. I will also be a different person a year from now.

–mb