Let’s Remember This.

Yesterday I had a friend over. It was the first time we had seen each other in months and it felt so good to see her actual face and hug her neck. We’ve both been quarantined in our houses, trying to do the right thing for the world and trying to use this time to make ourselves better.

She’s lost over 20 lbs doing the things she’s known and been wanting to do for YEARS and she’s taken control of her life in ways she hadn’t done before. She told me how she’s been more intentional than ever about self care and mental health and we realized we had both been going on more walks and taking more time for ourselves and our families’.

We both shared a sentiment of apprehension at things going back to normal because we had found pieces of ourselves during this time that we really liked and did not want to lose. As places and businesses begin to open up again, we realized that there were some things we did not want to return to ‘normal’.
She told me how much more peaceful and calm she felt since doing more yoga stretches and listening to her body than to her phone’s constant dinging (she works in real estate).
We described all the ways in which quarantine has been good for us and at one point we turned to each other and said
“let’s remember this.”

When life gets busy again and schedules get demanding, let’s remember this time of quiet in our lives and what we learned from it. When our kids are getting back on buses and they are waking us way too early again, let’s remember how much we longed for them to have a ‘normal’ life and to be able to see their friends again. Let’s remember the tears we wiped off their faces, telling them we don’t like it either and we didn’t want it to be this way and let’s not forget how we spent nights wiping the fear off of our own faces and praying for peace in this world again.

Let’s not forget all the prayers we prayed and the miles we walked and talked with God, because it didn’t makes sense to us, nothing made sense to us, and how we prayed that our loved ones wouldn’t get sick, and as things start to return to normal again, let’s remember what mattered most to us during this time.
Let’s remember the urgency with which we washed our faces and cleared our days of what wasn’t absolutely necessary and how we hung onto our sanity, above everything. Let’s remember how nothing else mattered except our loved ones’ health and their ensuing safety.

Behind all the masks of hate and division in our country let’s remember the smile of a good fiend and their acts of kindness toward us during this time. Let us not hang onto the sharp words of a stranger on the internet but rather let us remember the ones who brought groceries to our doorstep and read stories to our children and let us not forget the true ones. The true and kind and beautiful ones that made our world a little bit brighter during all of this.

Going forward, let’s remember to pace ourselves and not let the busy-ness take what we have gained during this time. The peace, the quiet, the decluttered minds and cleared calendars and let’s protect those things with our life, because we know now what is important, and what is life if we don’t have our health? Our freedom? Our families??

Life is too short to spend it arguing on Facebook or worrying about the future, so let’s remember our bodies and take a long deep exhale on our yoga mats and give thanks for what this time has taught us. When life gets busy again, let us not forget about humanity and how quickly things can change. How quickly we can have our freedoms and luxuries taken away and let’s remember what we are willing to fight for and let’s release everything else.
From now on, let’s
spend more time playing and less arguing
Take more time to check in with ourselves and less time checking our notifications
Buy more produce and less processed food
Get more sunshine (Vit D) and less “stuff” we don’t need
Surround ourselves with more love and less negativity
More exercise and creativity
and less sitting around worrying
Let’s
be more adamant about self care and loving ourselves well so we can love others and let’s spend less time fretting and worrying about the things we cannot change and spend more time changing ourselves,
shall we?

I hope we have all taken this chance to look within ourselves and to become better, healthier people because of this and I hope we can all take the lessons we learned into the future with us so that our kids and our grandchildren can see and remember all the good things that came out of this time in our lives.

Health and gratitude to all,
Ruthie

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