Normal Isn’t On the Menu

Posted on by stilllearning2b
normal isn't on the menu

Normal Isn’t On the Menu

It’s a hard time to be a parent right now.

I can feel the trepidation and frustration in their frantic posts. They’re worried for their kids, emotionally and academically. It’s been a rough few months, having to balance work and childcare, trying to be a parent while also playing the heavy when it comes to schoolwork. They desperately want their kids back in school so that they can reconnect with their friends, not fall too far behind academically and have structure again. Yet they’re also scared. Unsure about the safety plans put forth and the ability of children to follow guidelines. They crave the normal fears and excitement that surround a new school year.

It’s a hard time to be a teacher right now.

We’ve struggled teaching into the void with emergency distance learning and we’ve been worried about the well-being of our students. We desperately want to get back into the classroom where we can verify that each child is okay and we can facilitate the energy and excitement and community that form around learning together. Yet we’re also unsure, trying to problem-solve how to build a sense of collaboration when students are distanced and masked while simultaneously working on developing virtual lessons. Underlying that is fear. Fear that we’re going to see our students get sick and our colleagues fall ill. We wish we we’re busy decorating our new rooms instead of trying to make them safer.

It’s a hard time to be a human right now.

Back in the spring, we all had a sense of, “Okay. If we do this for a couple months, we can then get back to normal.” And now we’re here. Months have passed and there is still no end in sight. We know we can’t lock down forever, but we’re struggling to figure out how to live in this new world. We’re all grieving the way things were just a few short months ago. We all want normal.

But normal isn’t on the menu.

I see so many people (myself included) fighting against that fact. Arguing that normal must be available, maybe it’s just hidden in the back stockroom. That if we just ask nicely enough – or scream loudly enough – that normal will be served.

As far as defining moments go, this has been an odd one. Often, these life-changing events are quite sudden, clearly delineating a before and after – the accident that takes a life, the DDay where you learn of an affair, the diagnosis that steals your health. With those, it’s clear that there is no returning back to way things were. They require a recalibration of normal.

But this one snuck up on us, allowing for plenty of denial along the way. If we can believe that this is overblown, we can get back to normal. Or, if we cherrypick our data, we can convince ourselves that normal is just around the corner. We place our faith in an election, a vaccine or a treatment. But those are not quick fixes, flipping the switch back to normal.

Because right now and for the foreseeable future, normal isn’t on the menu.

It’s time to explore what IS on the menu.

We all tend to veer towards what we know. It’s comfortable and we like to be comfortable. Part of what makes this so hard is that we feel like we have no control. We want to choose different, not have it forced down our gullet.

Yet we’re here. Hungry to live again. And until we accept that normal isn’t available, we won’t be able to partake of what still is on the table.

And just maybe, we’ll find that some of the new options are preferable to the old and that we choose to leave some of normal behind.

Living With Uncertainty

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Like many (most? all?) of you, I’m struggling right now.

As a teacher, I’m used to a certain rhythm of the school year. And by now, I should be excited for summer, exhausted by the demands of the end of the school year and putting energy into finalizing plans for the next school year.

Instead, I’m sad about not being able to say goodbye in person, more blah than exhausted and the next school year is simply one big question mark.

I find myself increasingly distressed by the unknown of what’s coming. I keep reflecting back on the comfort (unappreciated at the time) of past years, when plans were in place and I could find peace in the surety of what was around the next corner.

But then I catch myself. Because those plans of past years were only certainties because I’m viewing them from the perspective of the future, where the scheduled events were carried out with only relatively small adjustments.

The truth is that uncertainty is always present, we simply hide it away beneath a veneer of imagined control, applied so that we don’t have to face the discomfort of admitting that we don’t have the ultimate say in what happens.

This year is no more or less uncertain than any other time. The outcomes are always in limbo and only seem inevitable once they occur.

Of course, the unknowns are more pronounced right now, like magma bubbling to the surface after a seismic event. It’s difficult to imagine what next week will look like, much less next month or next year. We are all being forced to drop our plans. In reaction, we’re grasping to control what we can – setting rules and boundaries for our families, calling out those who aren’t socially distancing the way we are and arguing against the ways our governments are handling the outbreak and the economic fallout.

It certainly FEELS different.

Because we become so accustomed to life unfolding in relatively predictable ways. And it’s only when it breaks open that we realize how that predictably is a story we tell ourselves so that we can sleep at night.

I keep thinking back to my summer 11 years ago. In a span of hours, I went from believing that I would never be apart from my then-husband to learning that everything we had together was a lie. Upon the discovery, I felt like I was in free fall, unable to trust anything. But in reality, the revelation of the duplicitous life wasn’t anything new, it simply uncovered what had always been there. I fought against that unknown for a time, craving the feeling of solid ground beneath my feet again. Yet it is was only when I stopped struggling to control every outcome that I was able to relax.

The lesson in all of this isn’t going to be found in finding a new way to try to control life. It’s in learning how to find acceptance that there is little outside ourselves that we can control and finding peace regardless.

Most days, I’m still struggling against this. But I’m finding moments when I can simply be in – and appreciate- today without undo concern for tomorrow.

Hope you all are well and are able to find your moments of peace.

This is hard. And also, in the words of Glennon Doyle, “We can do hard things.”

Lisa

 

Life is Not a Waiting Room

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Feels Like I’ve Been Here Before

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I keep getting the strange sense of deja vu.

Feeling like I’ve been here before.

Which is crazy on the surface of things. After all, this is a global pandemic, the likes of which have not been seen for 100 years.

None of us have been here before.

Yet, for those of us who have been through one or more of those life-altering moments – the discovery of infidelity, abandonment, sudden and profound loss – this may feel strangely familiar. After all, we know what it’s like to wake one morning to discover that the world we knew, the world which we trusted to ground us, no longer exists.

We are familiar with the grief that sneaks up and tugs at our guts when we’re not paying attention. And we are no longer surprised when we grieve the small things as much as the big ones.

We’ve experienced that strange sense of disbelief, of thinking that somehow this is all just a tragic mistake and that the reality we knew simply needs to be recovered.

We know the fear that comes with the uncertainty and the deep craving to return to a sense of safety. And we know that over time the belief things will return to normal is replaced with an acceptance that a sense of peace only comes once we’ve adapted to the new situation.

We’ve lived through that life turned upside-down, where the normally innocuous things have become threats hidden around every corner.

We’ve endured those long nights wishing things could be different before we dry our tears and pledge to focus on what we can control. And we learn both how small our influence is and also how powerful it can be.

We’ve tried to run away from our pain in the hope that we can distract our way out of it only to find that it cannot be outrun.

We’ve been through those moments of utter defeat when we feel like we’re not strong enough to get through this, only somehow we manage to make it through that day. And then the next.

This may be new. You haven’t been through this challenge yet.

But you’ve made it through others.

You know what to do.

 

Thoughts From a World Turned Upside Down

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