ONE YEAR LATER
It’s one year from the date I made the heart-wrenching decision to close the magazine for two months due to the fallout from COVID-19. At that time I didn’t know if we’d be able to open again, and I certainly could not envision what a year hence would look like.
Emotionally, mentally, and financially – this past year packed a wallop. Yes, we opened after two months but the challenges have been daunting. I’m very grateful for the steadfast loyalty of advertisers, readers, staff and suppliers. It took a village to make this possible.
My heartfelt thanks to everyone who wrote a note of encouragement, offered support, and continued to believe in this little magazine.
Last month my editor Bobbie Jo talked in this column about how change is inevitable and necessary.
In years past we could recycle our history to give us some clue on what outcomes we could expect from change. Today, I’m not sure history holds the key. We often use the word “unprecedented”. And that may, in fact, be the key to our understanding how to navigate ahead. I wonder if we might not just need to discard history and, instead, be flagrant pioneers of our future.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on the difference between overcoming a blockage and filling a void. In both instances it means something you would like to have, is absent.
Recently I was struggling with a brand new pen that kept running out of ink. After raging at the manufacturer, the retailer and the inanimate pen, I took a meditative look at what this pen was teaching me about myself.
Besides the infantile tantrum it provoked (I realized it wasn’t a conspiracy against consumers by big business), all it meant was the ink was not flowing. Not because of a blockage, but because of a void… likely a bubble of air in the tube.
How many disappointments in life do we blame on something or someone — believing it or they are blocking us from our gratification – when it is actually a void — often one that we’ve created ourselves?
In this COVID time, we’ve all become aware of the void of social connection. As sentient beings, connection to things, to people…is as natural as breathing. Restricting our ability to gather and masking our faces has put a damper on that life-enhancing force. It has created a very visceral void in our lives.
Beneath that very outward societal manifestation, however, is the void of connection to ourselves. It occurs to me that this pandemic time may have given many of us the gift of reconnecting with our inner core…getting to know ourselves in ways we never made time for or had the inclination to do before.
I have discovered emotions, reactions, and resources within myself that would not have surfaced otherwise. This has been a year of tending to some of the neglected voids inside. Remembering to thank myself, to believe in myself, to approve of myself, soothe myself, even hug myself.
So often we look to others for these remedies.
This year has taught me that the tools are more within than they are without.
The voids inside may masquerade as barriers which we try to rail against. It’s only when we take the time to quiet ourselves and listen inward that we recognize them as empty pockets we need to fill with some self-love and self-nurturing.
As we head into the renewal of Spring, may we all discover more ways to love and nurture ourselves. Because in healing ourselves, we heal the world.
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