Starting March 23rd, 2020 we will be publishing the experiences of real full-time bloggers during our Bloggers Surviving a Crisis series here at DearBlogger. We are accepting any and all guest posts that provide original advice. If you’d like to share your experiences, reflections and advice during the Coronavirus Pandemic too, please email us!
HI!
My name is Alyssa, also know as @glutenfree_fit_foodie – I’m 29 and live in Connecticut.
We have been one of the first states to announce lock down.
Hearing about lock downs in other places like Italy and even California was one thing, but having it be announced in your own state feels shocking, even though you knew it was coming.
Is This a Time to Be Afraid?
I live with an autoimmune disorder which means that if I’m very strict about my treatment and management of it, my risk of contracting COVID19 is very low. One slip up, however, and I become immunocompromised and high-risk.
I also have lived my whole life with anxiety and depression. I share this not for you to be scared for me but to paint the picture of how easily I could be giving into fear right now. I could very easily be letting the anxieties win.
But what good would that be doing to anyone?
We have to dig deep and find the gifts we are being given in the midst of this pandemic.
What Have I Learned Reflecting during the Pandemic?
In a world where we are constantly on the go and stressed out and overwhelmed thinking about what we have to do tomorrow and next week, we are being forced to slow down and to be present in the moment – many of us alone with our own selves. This is a huge opportunity to get in tune with who we are and listen to what our minds and bodies are telling us in order to become healthier, stronger (mentally and physically) and to find our true selves.
It’s allowing us the opportunity to do the work we’ve been putting off because we’re always “busy”.
It’s forcing us to re-evaluate our priorities and appreciate what we do have.
It’s allowing us to be grateful for things that we were blind to prior.
I’m not naive to the extreme hardship that many are facing right now but what we focus on, we create more of.
In a world where we are constantly on the go and stressed out and overwhelmed thinking about what we have to do tomorrow and next week, we are being forced to slow down and to be present in the moment – many of us alone with our own selves. This is a huge opportunity to get in tune with who we are…
This perspective shift is not to downplay or ignore any of that but to instead find the sliver lining and the light and to shine that as brightly as possible in hopes that other people see the rays and hold on to it and want to do the same. The outpouring of community and support happening right now is something I’ve never experienced. Let’s lean into that.
How Can We Grow as Individuals and As a Whole?
Let’s lean into gratitude and get in touch with our own minds and spirits to be the people we keep saying we want to be.
Now is our change.
This quarantine time can be a gift if you allow it to be.
For the first time in my lifetime, we are all collectively in the same position.
How can we use that to our advantage? How can we use that to understand each other better?
When this is all over, what can we do different and better to make this world the place we want it to be?
Let’s start that conversation and create the action to back it up.
Read more by Alyssa at her blog here.
Photo credit: CTmirror.org; read more about the Coronavirus in Connnecticut here.
Thanks for sharing the such information