A friend sent me a piece of writing yesterday which is doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment. It struck a cord, a deep one. It was both beautiful, poignant and so true. It talks of how we should be tender with ourselves and to remind ourselves how we moved into 2022 carrying the trauma, shock, grief and heaviness from the 2 years previous. Did we really think it was going to be a case of wiping the slate clean and carrying on as before. As if we could simply forget and move on? Of course it couldn’t be this simple. How could it be? Our brains and nervous systems had been through so much that in reality we were only just beginning to catch up with all that had been, and in many ways continues to be. 

Even if you hadn’t been personally affected by the pandemic, chances are you knew some one who had been. We saw the entire world reeling from deaths, new ways of being/socialising/working/living. The effects of which ravaged our nervous system and left us in a permanent state of fight/flight/freeze and ultimately exhaustion. We were perhaps naive to think that as we slowly re-entered a post-pandemic world, we could erase the effects from our body and psyche but in the words of the researcher and author, Bessel Van Der Kolk ’The body keeps the score” and oh boy does it…Our poor body has carried the trauma of these past few years and the result is one of exhaustion, overwhelm and despondency. The collective level of dis-ease and disbelief continued to flourish as we entered what many of us hoped would be a brighter, lighter and more hopeful year in 2022 only to watch on helpless, as Russia invaded Ukraine. As the cost of living rises across the globe and as the war in Ukraine rages on, it continues, to be a lot. 

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So yes….Of course this year has not felt as we hoped. We are weary, we are fragile, we are vulnerable. But…..but, has it all been bad? No! Of course not! It is never black and white. There have been moments of immeasurable joy. The world opened her arms once again, We had the most glorious Summer where the sun shone, the temperatures soared and life tasted sweet. Even the plunging temperature these last few weeks as we enter winter, has felt magical. Things appear more vivid, as if everything is in HD. If nothing else, we have been nudged awake to see the beauty in the simple pleasures of everyday life. And as we resume our old ways of socialising, hopefully we will continue to marinade in the joy of real life contact with our loved ones  and absorb the richness of traveling to new landscapes near and far. 

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