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Tactical Rice: Part 1

We’re living through unprecedented times, you know. Historians will have much to say about social, economic, and political issues unfolding as I type. 2020 will be thesis fodder for generations. And I, with my life so small in the grand scheme, want nothing more than a rubric by which to gauge my reactions and ensure a positive outcome. If only there was a road map through disaster.

Once upon a time in 2008 I watched the documentary Collapse and became unhealthily obsessive about preparing for the inevitable end of the world as we knew it (I did not feel fine). I’d always kind of known about the seriousness of climate change. I actually have a climate scientist family member who worked with NOAA and is still considered one of the most influential researchers in his field, despite most of his research on “global warming” taking place before it really even had a name. My Gen X cousins and I grew up learning about the seriousness of climate change without lobbyists trying to make the science appear to be contentious. So this shouldn’t have been brand new information.

Something about that documentary, though, flipped a panic switch in my already anxious brain. Suddenly, this was no longer a concerning bit of science. It was an emergency that required me to bulk-buy storage grain and learn make my own butter. After a year of absolute certainty that society would collapse before my kids even got to attend college and spending way too much money with an Amish mail-order catalog, some of my older and wiser friends intervened.

The world was supposed to end in the 60’s, they said. Duck and cover drills. Public figures assassinated in broad daylight. Economic instability. War. Generations before that were the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, more wars. History has a pattern. Periods of relative calm are always – ALWAYS – bookended by big, scary, seemingly unresolvable events. Every generation had something that made them suspect the world was perhaps ending.

We all have to make peace with the fact that the world won’t end until it’s good and ready to do so. The entire premise that we’re important enough to crack the code to surviving the actual end of the world when that time comes is just hubris. Self sufficiency is important, no doubt, but homesteading our way through global economic collapse or the social restructuring of a country isn’t a realistic goal.

In order to thrive in the world as it is now while preparing for realistic challenges in the future, we need to change the rubric. Successfully navigating major socioeconomic upheaval doesn’t look like a bunker with a stockpile of powdered eggs and ammo. That metric is wrong – and there’s a lot of companies using every marketing trick in the book to convince us otherwise. We’ve been sold a very convincing story about tactical gear and 25-year shelf life rice buckets. There’s a reasonable middle ground between pretending everything is fine and planning to ride out the end of the world alone in our basements.  

Climate change, peak oil, social unrest and global economic crisis is the monster that, if not yet at all of our doorsteps, is menacingly smoking a cigarette in our collective driveway. I don’t think for a minute that chickens and a wood stove and a stockpile of board games will protect my family from an uncertain future. Knowing how to make candles from recycled crayons is a nifty life skill, as are firepit cooking, clumsy yet serviceable clothes mending, learning the regionally available medicinal plants and practicing meditation. Think of it as building a toolbox for hard times. You don’t need to know everything that could possibly go wrong. Most skills you’ll need in a specific situation will be useful in any emergency. Cultivating a close-knit community of people with a broad spectrum of knowledge and skills is far more important than a well-provisioned panic room.

This spring New Yorkers experienced the end of the world as we knew it. The thing that made a real difference in my sense of wellbeing was not a bucket of rice, although I still have one in my pantry with 12.5 years of shelf life left to go. It was the local co-op that enforced no-hoarding rules and mask wearing long before the bigger chains. It was Zoom cocktail parties and end of the day phone calls with friends after working alone in my spare bedroom. We sent each other post cards and texts. Later as the weather improved and we learned more about transmission risk, we sat far apart in each other’s yards. I still carry a blanket and folding chair in my car for impromptu porch visits. We laughed and cried and ranted together; we learned to create new things that mattered out of the broken pieces of lifestyles that ended with no warning.

We’re in for a long winter for so many reasons. No amount of prepping will save us from the end of the world. Community will. Building community is the single most important life skill anyone can cultivate; not just for disaster preparedness.

October 2, 2021

Cecily Strong Is In My Head

I’m reading Cecily Strong’s book, This Will All Be Over Soon, about her lockdown experience. I highly recommend it – she has words for my experience that I’ve struggled to find for 18 months. As if she’s in my head. If you have unresolved lockdown trauma and need a good cry, seriously read this book.

She’s grieving out loud. It’s so personal, I feel like we’re friends now. Not in a creepy stalker way (I swear). Like I want to call to ask how today is and if she’s drinking enough water. That’s the kind of writer I want to be – we’re friends now, Reader, because I’m sharing my broken brain with you. Please be kind.

Recently, on a much-too-long car trip, my friend and I made the mistake of discussing Big Feelings while we were both in awful moods. Now, these awful moods had not one thing to do with each other, but suddenly there were Big Feelings in the car along with our awful moods and multiple hours left to drive.

Side note: if you’re ever on a long car trip with someone you like, and you’re both in awful moods, talk about things that don’t matter. Listen to your favorite band and point out the weird looking trees. Avoid, at all costs, anything the elicits emotions of any kind. It leads nowhere good. With this advice unheeded, we ended up discussing Covid Lockdown.

Although we’ve spent most of our days together for the past five years, we had extremely different lockdown experiences. I’m still shaken. For me, there aren’t enough words to describe those dark days. I’ve managed depression and anxiety my whole life and never in my 44 years has my brain been in such a scary place as those 96 days. When I emerged on Day 97, the day a handful of us tentatively returned to the office together and began sorting out the early days of New Normal, my mental health was abysmal. I was barely treading water (and the water was also on fire).

My friend’s perspective is that it happened and it’s over. In retrospect everything was fine. And it was actually fine – they’re not wrong. The reality is that we were incredibly lucky. We went home to watch Netflix with our families and, while it was scary at times, it was ultimately okay. The company hung on, no one lost their jobs or paychecks, our loved ones remained healthy. And now lockdown is over! Life continued and we don’t need to talk about it anymore!

So why do I still cry every time I think about those 96 days? Why do I sometimes have to set down Cecily’s book with shaking hands and take deep breaths because it’s like she’s in my head? What’s wrong with me? Shouldn’t I be better now that I know we all lived?

My friend says I need to learn how to let things go. I need to be better at compartmentalization. It’s frustrating to them sometimes that I’m still so messed up over something that wasn’t really that bad. Why do I still need to talk about it?

Those 96 days haunt me and I can’t explain why. Part of me feels ashamed and weak, but I’ve lived through some things (we all have – and it’s SO NOT OKAY to judge anyone else’s trauma). This is what I can’t wrap my head around, though. I’ve managed to keep on keeping on in seemingly much worse circumstances. So WTF is it about lockdown?

I’ve experienced trauma and loss and heartbreak that by all rational comparison was far worse than 96 days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns. I don’t have the right words, and although Cecily comes closer than my therapist or anyone else I’ve spoken to about this, I still can’t quite find them.

Here’s one of the things that still hurts to think about. My friend in the car refused to see me during lockdown. In the beginning I understood, no one knew what was happening and we’re in New York, the epicenter of scary in the earliest days of Covid. By mid-May, however, almost everyone I knew had started socially distanced outdoor meetups, yet one of the people I love most in the world – who had no underlying health conditions – didn’t want to see me in a setting every expert agreed was probably safe. My heart hurt missing this person, and I wasn’t important enough for a slight inconvenience. I know, I know, they had their own trauma response (although they won’t call it that because lockdown wasn’t traumatic!) and this is just what their fear looked like. I should respect that. It’s not fair for me to expect them to change themselves for my comfort. It hurt though. It hurt and they don’t want to talk about it, only tell me I am wrong for being upset still.

I still feel so broken and I miss the person I used to be. I don’t think she’s coming back. The worst part, I think, is having so many (highly inconvenient) Big Feelings that one of my best friends thinks are just excessive. I shouldn’t still be like this, and yet here we are.

So what are the right words? I am well aware how strange it is that I’m still so fucking sad about 96 days that happened a year and a half ago, but now I know it’s not just me. This actor I’ve watched every Saturday night for like 8 years is having a hard time too. That’s validating, right?. I know all of this and still I am close to tears writing about it. I want to ask Cecily to help me explain. She has better words than me. She felt the things I feel and wrote a whole book about it. I want to tell her she helped and I appreciate her.

I hope she’s drinking enough water. I want her to be okay.

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July 21, 2021

Stupid Ideas

Sometimes our people will think our ideas are stupid. Their opinions are harder to ignore; they’re not just random strangers. Because we trust that person enough to share the things we think, feel, and dream with them, their words matter. That doesn’t mean their opinions are correct.

Recently I shared a particularly rainbow-chasing pipe dream with a close friend. Something I have the means to accomplish but with no tangible reward. Doing a thing simply for the sake of doing it, because it makes me happy. Even though, by every rational measure, it’s probably not worth doing. With, I honestly believe, the best of intentions, my friend told me my idea is stupid.

The thing is, this person knows me. Like, really knows me. They know even though it makes no sense whatsoever, this particular dream is my most favorite rainbow to chase. I know my friend meant well. They are concerned that I’m wasting my time. They think I’m being ridiculous and they’re probably right.

Maybe this is my midlife crisis, but I feel like I’ve earned the right to be a little ridiculous. My stupid little dream isn’t hurting anyone. No one will be disappointed except maybe my own self, and isn’t that risk the entire point of chasing the occasional rainbow?

I wish my dumb heart wasn’t so easily bruised. I wish I wasn’t awake tonight, feeling bad about myself and writing a blog about it, and I wish my friend could have kept their judgement to themselves this one goddamned time. My ideas, while often stupid, also sometimes turn out to be really great. My company was an exceptionally stupid idea and this year it turned 21. My stupidest idea ever is old enough to drink and employs 8 people. Not to shabby for a pipe dream, eh?

I’ve also had some really spectacular failures. I’m talking failures so epic it’s as if I was involved in a bet. Failure with fireworks and jazz hands. Everything I’ve ever actually accomplished started with what seemed at the time to be a stupid idea. Yet here I stand, with my stupid bruised heart and so many rainbows I still want to chase.

So my point, if I even have one, is that maybe sometimes it’s okay to dream of stupid things, as long as it’s not harming anyone. And maybe, sometimes, showing up for a friendship means standing with our people even when we think their dreams are stupid.

Sharing obviously brilliant ideas is easy. If someone chooses you to share their stupid ideas, though, maybe you should be flattered instead of trying to correct them. When someone trusts you enough to share their stupid ideas, the one’s they’re a little bit ashamed of, be still and listen. I need your support, not your judgement.

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March 1, 2021

March Again

So it’s March again. Or still. Is everyone else exhausted too, or is it just me?

Anniversaries of traumatic events are tough. When I was training to be a Death Doula, we talked a lot about anniversary grief. The one year mark of a death is a time to honor our dead person and sift through our memories about the death. It can be a time of peaceful introspection or a hellscape of anxiety, and it’s perfectly normal for it to be a mix of both.

In March 2020 the world split irrevocably into two parts – before and after. We aren’t going back to the before times. No matter who we elect, how many of us get vaccinated, or what the economy does. We’re only going forward with the knowledge that something terrible has happened that affected every single one of us.

I remember waking up every day with a deep sense of both fear and apathy. The act of forcing myself to believe that something – anything – mattered was in itself exhausting. This was my brain adjusting itself to the tsunami of cortisol and adrenaline that accompanies a crisis. The thing is, this crisis wasn’t as simple or short lived as a car accident or a leopard in the tall grass. Our brain’s complex system of protecting our dumb asses in a crisis ended up hurting us more than it helped. This time, the leopard really was in the tall grass, and it’s not leaving anytime soon. We have no choice but to adapt to our surroundings, so like many of our ancestors before us we’re experiencing how trauma rewires our brains. It’s unpleasant.

Exercise, eating real food, meditation, social interaction (even on Zoom), hobbies, work, and down time for our tired brains all help this process. All of this can smooth the rough edges of a horrible experience, just like it does when we’re grieving a person, but it can’t change the fact that grief is uncomfortable on it’s best day. Grief physically hurts us. And we are all grieving right now.

The whole world is grieving the future ripped away from us so quickly that will never be quite the same. We’re grieving our dead people, our collective poor choices and those of our leaders, and the ways in which our society has changed. Perhaps it’s changed for the better, and still even good change is disconcerting. Grief in a culture that’s death-illiterate and has never been taught how to grieve is difficult. This year has been an incredible challenge for us.

For those of us with the incredible good luck to not lose our jobs or our people, it may seem disingenuous to still feel this grief. It’s not, so please let yourself off the hook for any of that misplaced guilt. We all lost something. Our sense of wellbeing, the peace of mind that comes from being many generations removed from this kind of trauma. We were gaslighted by our leaders and watched half the country deny that a global pandemic was real. Whenever I am faced with a COVID denier, while I gave up so much to flatten the curve, the rage I feel is overwhelming. I’m probably not the only one.

So if you’re feeling big emotions that don’t make sense in the context of where we are right now, it’s probably COVID grief. Processing trauma takes a long, long time, and we’re still in the middle of the crisis. This is what the anniversary of a death looks like. You’re not losing your mind, I promise. We’re grieving in community.

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February 24, 2021

Henrietta

She announced her superior position in a text:

This is his wife. He is in the hospital. And does not want to see you. Do not come here.

I knew you first, by the way. Not that we’re keeping score.

When I’d asked, a few months earlier, who will call me when you die? You said: I want you here with me. Holding my hand.

You and I were friends who loved each other. You said I was the one with whom you could discuss your death, because I had a way of listening without holding you accountable for my grief. You said, please keep coming back.

For eighteen months and eighty thousand miles, I came back. Until I knew the thruway like I knew my back yard. Until the baristas in the rest-stop Starbucks recognized me. You said the wife, from whom you were long separated, knew you had a meaningful friendship with a woman you’d known for decades. You said I was important. You called me your best friend. So I came back to you.

You said your people would honor my place in your life. The moment you were too sick to speak any of that sweetness, Your people found different words for me: Lying piece of shit. Drama queen. Gold digger. Whore.

So I stayed in a hotel in Henrietta. For two sleepless days. Weeping. Raging. Disintegrating. A five minute drive from you.

I didn’t know how to be that sad in Henrietta. So the next day, when you called to ask why I didn’t come to see you, I was in Rhode Island. I will forever regret being so far away from you when you called me for the last time, and I will forever regret coming back.

I didn’t know you tried to add me to your will. I didn’t know you tried to give me money I didn’t want or need, to thank me with dollars when you ran out of words. Of course they hated me. Of course they thought the worst of me. Of course they forced you to change that will, took your phone, read words not meant for them. Or course the laser focus of their grief became the inexplicable intimacy of a long platonic friendship. All that grief turned into more palatable rage; of course it did. You offered up the perfect recipe for rage-grief on a gilded platter.

What were you thinking? You sweet, stupid, selfish man.

My final gift to you is quietly accepting that I am reviled by nearly every person who ever loved you. I will not hate them back. I wish them all well (and far away, but still, honestly, well).

So please, darling, understand. I did not mean to let you down on our final day.

That broken girl in Henrietta was unprepared for a hospital room filled with the people who banned her from your funeral.

So the woman who grew up in the shadow of a castle and drove nine hours from Narragansett had to come instead. To stand alone in a room full of hate and whisper to you: Thank you for this adventure. I’ll see you next time.

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October 1, 2020

Chronic

I’ve had chronic pain for 26 years because of a car accident. The seatbelt that saved my life caused irreparable nerve and tendon damage. Because I survived that car accident, I live in pain.

October is a time of heightened grief awareness for me. It’s the start of my favorite season and the anniversary of my partner’s death. October took me by surprise this year, with all the other things happening in the world. So I’m thinking about grief and my car accident. There’s a parallel between them.

I don’t think about the car accident every time I notice shoulder pain. When life gets stressful and I forget the physical therapy exercises that keep my left arm from becoming useless ballast, I don’t curse the seatbelt when my hand can no longer hold a coffee cup.

I don’t think about Marvin’s death every time grief sneaks up on me. When I suddenly feel as if a large stone has been placed on my chest, I touch the soft place at the base of my throat, thank the man who helped me get to this place in my life, and move on. I earned this grief, it’s mine to carry for the remainder of my time in the world. I loved our life, and I love the one I’m living now. Like the seatbelt that both saved and broke me, my life today would not have been possible without those scars.

Chronic pain, whether from a seatbelt or grief, is just the thing that happened next after the crash. It’s mine, and it means I lived.

August 31, 2020

September is scary

Today, on September-eve, I feel unsettled. September is scary. Here’s why.

Six months ago the world as we knew it ended and everything changed. That’s just the beginning of the story. I eventually adapted by creating lovely outdoor spaces in which to socialize with my loved ones. Yesterday I shopped online for a patio heater, my attempt to extend outside social distance friend time. I know it’s going to be temporary. Someday soon it will be ten degrees with six inches of snow on the ground and we’ll be back to Zoom happy hours and waving from our heated cars across a parking lot.

We know so much more now, about exposure and viral load and how long we can be in a room with another person with a mask before things get dicey, how large that room needs to be and how many air changes per hour* it needs to even begin to mimic the outdoors.

What the science doesn’t tell us is how to survive a long winter without close contact with our people. Three months at home was difficult for me, even surrounded by family. Despite our incredible luck – continued health, safety, and employment – the thought of going back into that dark place makes my fingertips numb and my chest hurt.

When the morning temperatures dip into the 40s it’s hard to not think about all the adaptations to come. Acclimating to no vacation or family day at the county fair was easy. But what about Thanksgiving and Christmas? Will my sister be able to visit? Will our parents be lonely when we can only stand outside for a few minutes? What about the special reindeer mugs my mother uses for homemade hot chocolate on Christmas Eve – will she bring them to us in the driveway? Will we feel safe enough to let her?

I tell myself nothing happens the same way twice. We fail differently every single time. There’s no going back, good or bad. All these words should be comforting. Today they are not. So what’s next?

I am doing my best to be mindful about spending quality time with people I love right now. When I feel like I need to cry, I just let it happen. In the shower, in the car, in my office with the door closed. Sometimes a dozen times a day, I cry for the things I can’t control and loss I won’t see coming until it happens, because even my anxiety can’t predict everything. It all just seems like too much.

And then, after sitting with all those uncomfortable feelings, I move on with my day. My newly developing superpower seems to be falling apart and shaking it off. This is my new normal, and it’s not at all uncommon. Sustained exposure to chaos does things to our brains. We’re not losing our minds, it’s just science, and it’s only for now.

My point is that September isn’t a monster, it’s just another month. I’ll tell myself this every day until my covid-trauma addled brain chooses a new monster. Whatever your monster is today, it’s only for now, just like everything else. Cry and breathe and drink enough water and eat real food and survive the next minute and the one after that and the one after that. We’ve got this.

* https://www.ashrae.org/file%20library/technical%20resources/covid-19/ashrae-healthcare-c19-guidance.pdf

August 24, 2020

How to be brave

Once at a conference my friend and colleague, who had recently switched jobs, told me I was brave. The consulting firm he’d worked with for a decade had closed when its owner retired. After briefly considering starting his own business he took a job at an engineering firm. He told me he chose lack of autonomy for job security because he’s not as brave as me.

It was a brief exchange that stuck with me for years. I used to revisit those words often, especially at times in the not so distant past when I covered my payroll by not paying myself if cash flow was sporadic. I have relationships with many larger, more established companies. If I walked away from my own small business adventure I’d probably find a cubicle with my name on it. So why do I choose this? Am I really brave?

I’ve spent years building a team of like-minded people, for whom this work is a gift. The greatest reward for our efforts is one more day not in a cubicle. We are people who can’t sit still, who need an endless series of new challenges to stay engaged. Mindless work is soul crushing. The risk involved in entrepreneurship makes us feel alive. Every successful business owner I’ve ever met, regardless of what their business does, have one thing in common. We are (almost) unafraid to fail.

Failure is part of the trajectory, and we wouldn’t trade this wild ride for anything, including job security and a 401K. We fail. We learn. We try again. Entrepreneurship is having the confidence to believe, in the depths of your soul, that whatever challenge comes your way you will learn your way through it. We practice until adapting to failure is muscle memory. There’s no way to anticipate what’s next but no matter what happens we know how to play this game. It’s more than loving our jobs or wanting to make money. The thrill of a constantly shifting landscape is just as much a part of us as our blood and bones.

There’s a downside to my apparent fearlessness that belies most successful small businesses. If I’m too distracted by what’s next, I quickly lose sight of what’s happening now. While planning is an imperative part of leadership, too much focus on looking forward can undermine current success. It’s difficult for me to remain present; I thrive on planning and problem solving. Because of this, I sometimes need redirecting to the less exciting aspects of business ownership that require my attention.

Knowing this about myself, I’ve learned to delegate a lot of the day to day tasks to people who excel with to-do lists and task completion. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Acknowledging mine, and filling gaps in my own abilities with the strengths of others, has made me, and my company, stronger.

One of the best choices I’ve made so far is hiring someone with a totally different approach to planning than mine. I have a strong tendency toward implementing multiple (clearly brilliant) ideas all at once. My Vice President keeps me focused by gently reminding me to finish one project before starting another. He also likes to remind me that my name is on the sign, that he never would have started his own company. Yet he mitigates my rainbow chasing, eases me out of hyper-focus when necessary, and makes sure our staff have what they need now while I’m looking for our next horizon. We’ve been exponentially more successful ever since.

I still don’t feel very brave, but I’ve noticed it’s easier to seem fearless when I don’t have to do it alone.

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August 17, 2020

Advisory Board

The time has come for my corporation to have an advisory board, a group of trusted professional peers I can count on to disagree with me without disrespect or hurt feelings. People who can help me maintain our trajectory of doing good things that matter with the ethics and integrity.

I work with a lot of people who thrive in leadership roles. It’s sometimes hard to believe that I might also be a strong leader, an accomplished person. Someone I would have looked up to when I was younger. The fact is that my many of my professional peers are people I sometimes can’t believe choose me as their friend or view me as their equal. It’s difficult to imagine that I am one of them.

We attract what we believe we deserve. I’ve spent too many years believing I deserved to be surrounded by people who don’t respect me or my company. I am done with that now.

I’ve been surrounded by strong women my entire life. I wish I could invite all my aunts and cousins to my board – they are the strong, accomplished, incredible women I hoped I’d grow up to be. Not to exclude men – I am blessed with many wonderful humans in my life and career. However, I am struck by the number of my professional peers who have navigated construction sites and board rooms filled with powerful men from a generation that, by and large, views our gender as a disability.

Male privilege doesn’t always announce itself with a “hey sweetie” and a slap on the ass. Sometimes it’s the perfect gentleman who addresses all his questions to my male assistant, despite my 22 years in environmental compliance and my name on the letterhead. I’ve learned to overlook it as long as the client’s checks don’t bounce, and often bring a male colleague with me for this reason. For now my solution is often to let my bruised ego take a backseat in the interest of signing new clients. Perhaps my board of strong leaders, both male and female, will find a better solution.

I believe it’s an act of incredible courage to let ourselves be vulnerable. Allowing other people to help me make decisions about my company is far outside my comfort zone, yet necessary for healthy growth. It’s time to start believing I deserve to stand beside other strong, accomplished leaders.

August 17, 2020

Platitudes

There’s a story I’ve been telling myself, in an attempt to rationalize my pandemic trauma response. We have always been one diagnosis or accident away from crisis, loss, and destruction. Nothing is new here. Covid has just shed light on a fact of life that is usually easier to ignore.

Recently a friend pointed out that I repeat this story a lot these days, and it kind of sounds like I’m trying to convince myself. This observation hit a little close to home so I sat with it for a few days and here’s what I came up with: That story, while comforting, is bullshit.

Of course random terrible things happen. It’s part of the deal when we’re in the world. No one here gets out alive, right? We reconcile our temporariness however we can with spiritual beliefs or denial, and without fail everything falls apart eventually. That’s what it is to be human.

The comparison between random accidents and Covid, though, is flawed. I have some semblance of control, no matter how flimsy, over accidents and illness. My seatbelt and airbags, choosing to not drive drunk or texting, none of it guarantees safety but it helps. Daily workouts, a somewhat anti-inflammatory diet, and regular physicals won’t make me impervious to disease but may increase my survival odds if I get sick. None of these things are life altering decisions. Turning down a cupcake or putting my phone in airplane mode while driving aren’t heartbreakingly difficult choices.

Covid came blazing into our lives demanding rapid and drastic adaptation. Stay home. Don’t visit your older or immunocompromised loved ones. Previously innocuous tasks like working or grocery shopping might kill you, or someone else. Wear a mask and be prepared to defend yourself in public spaces if you’re attacked for trying to follow the rules.

On a Friday in March I went home believing I’d followed the rules and made appropriate preparations. I’d read all the scientifically sound information I could find, from the US and abroad, and truly believed I had a handle on whatever was happening. Oh my gosh was I wrong.

That Friday we all left a staff meeting where we’d painstakingly created incredibly idealistic plans. We said goodbye as if Monday would surely happen, and went home to our personal lives without much thought.

On Sunday the schools closed, our agreed upon remote work trigger event that we thought would be weeks away at least. On Monday we scrambled to gather what we needed for remote work, still believing it would be short and temporary. At noon the state offices closed. By the end of the day the 100% Workforce Reduction Executive Order was in place, and we wouldn’t see each other outside of Zoom meetings for three months. Work orders stopped. Clients closed their offices just as we’d closed ours. In the space of 48 hours everything we planned for no longer mattered.

Let me be clear, we were extremely, undoubtedly, ridiculously lucky. My staff and I collected our full salaries from the safety of our homes. Everybody lived. No part of my story is tragic.

The point is that the loss of control was ruthless and swift, shaking the foundation of everything. Things that usually give us a competitive edge against unforeseen disaster did not matter anymore. Plans based on science and research and good intentions turned into moot points faster than they could be implemented.

When I speak of trauma brain or covid-depression, I’m not euphemistically referring to mild disappointment or annoyance. People became enraged, afraid, or withdrawn, things we all took for granted were suddenly missing from everyday life. The loss of our way of life and some of the people in it is profound. Very rarely do we lose our entire way of life all at once with no warning and no end in sight.

This world altering event is different than anything we’ve experienced in our lifetime. We have no basis for comparison and thus no comforting stories to tell ourselves. I shouldn’t minimize the trauma we all feel on some level with platitudes about car accidents and cancer; that doesn’t help. Six months of sustained crisis chemically alters our brains. Unlike personal trauma, we have nowhere to look for normalcy because there is no normal anymore. We’re all figuring it out together.

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