Hello Friends!

I trust that July finds you and yours healthy and safe.   As for me, I’ve gotten into a routine that helps me adjust to working from home and enables me to put boundaries between work and personal time.  I must say, the latter was not easy.  For example, because social cues are missing when one works from home, and the press of emails and work stuff can be consuming, I found it easy for me to skip lunch.  This turned out to be a bad idea for a host of reasons.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was also dealing with a sense of loss and grieving the abrupt end of a “normal” life for me.   Clearly, COVID has caused trauma – from minor to major—in everybody’s lives.  Our lives have been disrupted, routines shattered, and what we considered
“normal” now seems an increasingly distant memory.  And, of course, there is anxiety about bridging to the other side.  Of course, for some of us what “the other side “means, can bring its own set of anxiety.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve now accepted that each of us has suffered a loss.  No, nothing dramatic for many of us, but a loss nonetheless.  Our individual losses will be different depending on our current and past experiences.  For some of us,  it is the loss of freedom to move about, the loss of control over the daily cadence of life,  the loss of intimacy (tough to kiss your grandchild from 6 feet away!), the loss of personal connections with family, friends, co-workers or even the casual exchange of pleasantries while waiting for a BART train or getting coffee.  These losses shouldn’t be trivialized or made heroic.  I think it’s important to acknowledge the loss so that we can move on.  I believe resilience comes in the heels of dealing with loss.

I find it reassuring to be reminded that as a community and as human beings, we have proven to be resilient.  We have emerged on the other side of other traumatic events, perhaps not even recognizing at the time, the strength we had to do so.  Read more about the human resilience in an article titled, “Surviving the Trauma of COVID-19” in our blog here.

With that, I look forward to the journey to the other side of this pandemic with all of you.  I KNOW we are better together!

All my best,
Cora