Taking care during COVID

If ever we have needed to rely on each other and be gentle with ourselves – it’s now! And yet during the uncertainty and separation of this time, it may be harder than ever to reach out, to offer help, to ask for help, and to deeply connect with one another. In the face of unrelenting pressure, widespread and genuine fear, and all the life stressors that have not stopped since COVID hit (or were created or exacerbated when COVID hit) it can be challenging to give ourselves the grace we need, or to offer ourselves a kind and encouraging word – yet how we need that too.

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As we continue to mask, distance, and work toward community health and wellness, we may also consider how we can extend care and compassion to…ourselves, our family, our friends, our neighbours, the ones who cross our mind as we read these words, and the ones who cross our path on any given day. It may not look the same as before, but we do well to remember that human beings are, at the heart, adaptive. As neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman has pointed out, our brains come wired with the mechanisms required to respond to stress – we were made to move through adversity.

How has your social system adapted to keep bridging connection? What have you discovered, or uncovered, about yourself that was previously unknown? What matters to you now that didn’t before? What doesn’t? What do you most value? If you are reading this, you have survived even your worst day. How did you do it? What helped? Who helped? How can you build more of that?

While this video by Dr. Gordon Neufeld is called Parenting through the Pandemic, we think it could have been fairly titled “Being a Person through the Pandemic”.  For a lovely framework of attachment, and an exploration into what truly alarms us (and how to resolve it) please enjoy this video, shared here with permission from the Neufeld Institute.

As always - take very good care