If you were to look at your life during COVID time in chapters, what would they be?

We have now been on lockdown for over a year, and I wanted to look at my life on the “forest” level, rather than the “trees”.

COVID time, for me, has been a lot of coping, adapting, and managing, at the “tree” level, and I was curious what I would see if I stepped back from the trees for a moment, and tried to see the forest.

My “chapters” came into my mind as soon as I asked myself the question.

I was surprised that my chapters had to do with dogs.

And, before I share my story, I want to say that my husband Harold and I have been extraordinarily fortunate during COVID time. Our challenges have been minimal, especially compared to many people who have experienced true hardship and tragedy. We have been blessed, and we are grateful.

The first part of lockdown, for us, was taking care of our dog Harper as his life was coming to an end. It was a sacred time and a very sad time. Harper was with us for 16 years, and we loved him deeply. Giving back to him, and loving him in this way was really important to us, a gift for him and for us, but it was a huge loss, too.

After Harper died, we were dogless for almost four months. This was unprecedented for us, and it seemed like an eternity. With lockdown, we felt lonely and isolated. We are dog people. Having dogs and caring for dogs make us better people. But, for various reasons, it was a few months before we met our “right” dog.

Then, we met Bella, a husky-mix rescue dog, who was clearly our dog. The rescue agency where we adopted her said she was one of the shyest dogs they had met. Our trainer said she was one of the most fearful dogs he had met. Our life instantly became one of helping her to feel safe and loved again, and eventually joyful. This is a long, careful process.

It really isn’t a surprise that my COVID year was defined by dogs (or the lack thereof). I am the best version of me when I am engaged with my dogs. They help me know love, and be love, in a different way than with my close human companions.

How does it help me to look at my COVID time in chapters? What’s important about this?

• I feel like it’s important for us to process what we have been through during COVID time, on the “forest” level. We’ve all been living in the “trees” for a long time.
• It helps me to consolidate my experience and to begin to put it in perspective.
• It tells me something about what is important to me: that I be the best person I can be.

What are your chapters, for your life in COVID time?

Earlier this month, I wrote a blog post called Vision, What Vision? It was about what having a vision means in these times of uncertainty, and what is possible now with regards to life vision.

In that blog post, I listed some questions that I suggested we might consider as a means of orienting ourselves in this emerging, evolving, changing, sometimes-chaotic environment.

I forgot the most important question.

For those of you who missed that post, here are the questions that I asked:

• What do we actually want our lives to be, when we are fully at choice again?
• What pieces from our former “normal” do we want to pick back up?
• What pieces would we rather leave behind?
• What would we like to introduce into our lives that may be completely new?

As I worked with those questions myself, it became blindingly obvious that those questions cannot be truly answered until you ask yourself: What really matters?

So, I invite you to ask yourself that question.

I have a feeling that most of us have gotten some deeper clarity about the answer to that question over this COVID-19 time.

I was surprised when I started to really think about that question for me.

The first things that came to me were some of the things that have been cornerstones for me, always, but especially in the last year:

• My family. Especially my “pack”: my husband and my dog Bella (and Harper before that).
• My friendships. These are nurturing, life-giving; they are a lifeline, even when they are virtually-based.
• My health. A foundation for everything else.
• My daily connection with Nature. Nature feeds me.
• My creativity. If I don’t do some art every day, I go bonkers in short order.

Those weren’t the surprise, because I was consciously aware that all of these are essential to me.

What came to me when I really “sat” with the question “What really matters?” was:

• That my connection to spirit is strong.
• That I live with gratitude, especially that I live with a vital sense of appreciation for the ordinary and everyday.
• The person who I am, for myself and others.
• That I feel like I am living on a solid footing of grace and equanimity.

The answers to that all-important question (that I temporarily forgot!) are now a compass for what I want to pay attention to as I move forward in my life from here.

These questions all point me to strengthening my daily spiritual practice.

What really matters, for you?

Is it possible to have a life vision in these days of COVID-19 uncertainty?

As we are all in various stages of COVID-influenced opening-back-up and/or closing-down-again, we are faced with questions to ask ourselves:

• What do we actually want our lives to be, when we are fully at choice again?
• What pieces from our former “normal” do we want to pick back up?
• What pieces would we rather leave behind?
• What would we like to introduce into our lives that may be completely new?

We are being given an opportunity to do a reset, if we choose, albeit probably of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back variety.

I don’t know the answers to all of these questions. I am clear about some of them, and foggy about others.

And what I am even foggier about is how all the pieces will fit together, so I am not sure if it is possible to have a life vision right now.

But I do believe that it is helpful to ponder the questions, in a thoughtful and conscious way, even though it may feel very tentative and a lot “wobbly” right now.

It is that old adage that if you don’t know where you would like to go, you will surely end up somewhere else. And that paradox: plans are useless, but planning is essential.

Also, I always try to remember that if it’s not possible to have a vision for my outer life right now, I can have a vision for the person that I want to be.

What are the questions that you are living into right now?

For most of December, I was feeling a sense of dissatisfaction, restlessness, a sort of ennui. I was also frequently on the edge of frustration and irritation, for the smallest things. I wasn’t being who I wanted to be, but I couldn’t seem to shake it. It wouldn’t leave me alone.

I know that I am extremely fortunate, extraordinarily blessed, in this Pandemic. When I think of the millions of people who are suffering in so many very tragic ways, my minor concerns are truly petty.

Finally, I recognized this experience for what it is. I have felt it before. It’s a call.

It’s a call that is calling me back to my true self, and specifically to my spiritual ground.

For a variety of reasons, a confluence of outer factors and commitments, I had greatly reduced my spiritual practice time, and had abandoned entirely my daily creative practice. I had dropped the ball on nourishing myself and replenishing my well.

I hadn’t resorted to full-time doom-scrolling, nor did I have my iPhone surgically implanted into my body. But I was spending more time than was healthy, or necessary, checking on the state of things in our nation and the world. It’s important to me to be an informed citizen, but, beyond that, those behaviors are non-essential.

I need to turn all of this around, because it is essential that I have deep spiritual roots to be with all that is happening in our world today, and to be the person I want to be.

I need to return to my connection with, and the authority of, my soul.

I am using this holiday time to shift my balance of attention and to restart my commitments to my daily practices. This, over time, will deepen my spiritual roots again.

If you would like some tools to help you have a conversation with your soul, especially at this year end threshold, I have two freebies for you to download.

Year End 2020 is a year-end, year beginning reflection which allows you to reflect on 2020, what it has meant to you, and to understand what will help you feel a sense of completion for the year. Then, it leads you through a process to focus your aspirations and intentions for 2021. This reflection doesn’t specifically address the impact of the Pandemic.

Here is the Soul Connection Kit for the Pandemic. I published this on the blog in April, but a number of my clients are finding it more relevant right now, so I’m posting it again. This is the one that will help you reflect on the effect of the Pandemic on yourself and your life.

You could do both of them if you wish. They aren’t repetitive.

Just as mine did, your soul knows whatever you need to know right now. Trust it, and access that inner wisdom.

With much love to you, and many blessings for your well-being.

Today is Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.

I celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes by sending out a free “Alignment Kit,” which is a nurturing conversation with your soul. Here it is.

This Kit is about joining Winter energy in “hunkering down” and revitalizing. We can all use some revitalizing this season, I’m guessing.

When we open to Winter’s gifts, we can replenish our inner wells and recharge our energy.

Your soul has all the answers for what you need to know right now. Trust it, and access that inner wisdom.

With much love to you, and many blessings for your well-being.

P.S. I apologize to those of you who may be on another one of my mailing lists; you may receive duplicates of this note. Think of it as more love coming from me. 🙂

One of my friends, who is a faithful fan of my seasonal Alignment Kits, said she needed a Pandemic Alignment Kit. That sounded like a great idea to me; I needed one for myself!

Then, when I mentioned to another friend that I was creating one, she said: “But we don’t want to align with the Pandemic!”

A point very well taken.

So here is your Soul Connection Kit for the Pandemic, for those of you who aren’t on my Alignment Kit mailing list.

There’s never a better time to align with your soul and hear your deepest wisdom than in a Pandemic.

If you’d like to do some inner work to enhance your clarity and stability in these uncertain times, I offer this kit to you, with my love.

Your soul knows whatever you need to know right now. Trust it, and access that inner wisdom.

Yesterday I found a piece of the puzzle. It was lying on the side of the road where I take my walks.

It doesn’t have any color or a design on it, and there’s no box with a picture on it to show me what the completed puzzle looks like.

If this isn’t a metaphor for being in this Pandemic, I don’t know what is.

I started thinking about how I want to see the whole picture of what lies ahead, for me and for us, as a society and culture.

How long will we be in Stay at Home, Lockdown?

What will it look like when we are released?

How will my day-to-day life change?

What will have changed, forever?

What is possible now?

So many questions, and these are just a few.

But, of course we can’t have, or know, the whole picture.

We never could, but this journey feels like a more exaggerated or acute version of the Not Knowing that we usually live.

Here’s the thing: we will be given each piece, as we go along.

We won’t necessarily know what all the pieces are, or how any particular piece fits with all the others, or what the picture is that it will eventually make.

But we will know the one piece for now.

The art form for our times, then, it seems, would be to develop the awareness, skills, consciousness, whatever it takes, to be in peace with just the next piece of the puzzle.

How do we do that?

What does it require, to move with just the next piece?

Lots of things come to mind as I ask that question:

• Respect for the process of the unfolding
• Patience with the process
• Commitment (to what?)
• Confidence (in what?)
• Curiosity, instead of frustration
• To honor and trust the timing, and that it takes the time that it takes.

When I looked at that list, I thought that they all feel like they are coming from the place in my head where the Shoulds live.

They all sound important, but it feels like something else is even more important.

What really matters is that I receive each puzzle piece and move forward from an inner place of clarity and stability.

For me, this means that my morning practices of grounding and centering and journaling are even more important than they ever have been.

That especially during the uncertainty of the Pandemic, I commit to a consistency of focus on my inner life, like never before.

That is the only way I know to be ready to pick up each puzzle piece as it comes to me and to be able to move forward with it in inner clarity and stability.

What is it important for you to attend to, as you put your new puzzle pieces into place?

Right now, none of us knows what the future looks like. We never really do, but right now the uncertainty feels heightened as we have no idea what the new normal looks like, or even when it will come.

So, it feels important to cultivate hope.

I have always loved wild birds, and bird nests feel like hope to me.

Recently, Harold and I were repairing an outside light fixture, which is right outside our back door.

Many years ago, a pair of robins built a nest on that light fixture, and the female laid her eggs.

It didn’t matter to the robin that two people and two dogs were constantly coming and going right by that nest, while she sat on her eggs.

She just sat.

For three years, that robin came back to that nest and laid her eggs in it. Then, the next year, she didn’t come back.

The nest has remained empty for a several years now; we have left it there in her honor.

This Spring, in order for us to repair the light fixture, we had to remove the robin’s nest. Now it sits under the eaves on a grain bin.

Harold and I take a couple of long walks every day along our road, and I have been collecting small rocks that look to me like bird’s eggs, from the gravel that lines the road.

I come home and place those stones in the nest.

For me, this nest has become my symbol of hope.

Right now, this is my way of cultivating hope, because the eggs represent potential, and potential resides in the future.

I don’t know what other ways I will cultivate hope, but I do feel that it is important for each of us to find ways to cultivate hope, each in our own ways, especially during this time of heightened uncertainty.

How are you cultivating hope?

How do we make any meaning out of something that is so horrifying and volatile as this coronavirus pandemic? When there is so much suffering, worldwide?

That seems like an oxymoron.

But, as one of my clients said: what if this is also a sacred time?

As we all know, in any situation, there are multiple things that are possible or true.

There’s love in grief. There’s holding our center in chaos. There’s searching for personal meaning in this capricious and uncaring pandemic.

The art is in being able to hold them all simultaneously.

And the real art is choosing our response to something that is completely out of our control.

It is stunning how quickly the environment of our lives is changing, and how unpredictability is becoming a way of life.

I sent this list of questions to my clients, as a place to start to try to make a meaning for ourselves out of this crisis.

Of course, the crisis will affect each of us in vastly different ways, so different questions will resonate with different people, depending upon their very unique reality. Some of them will feel right for you, and some of them won’t. That’s ok; don’t force it.

• What are your most essential values, and how can you live them even more fully in this chaotic and changing environment?
• What matters most to you during this time, and how does that awareness inform your choices now?
• Who do you choose to be, as we move forward every day, in increasing uncertainty? We don’t necessarily choose the circumstances that we find ourselves to be in, but we do get to choose who we want to be, and we can decide how we can be responsive instead of reactive.
• Check in with yourself and very compassionately feel whether there is a part of you that feels stress in this uncertainty. How can you take care of that part of you, with love and compassion, while you remain centered in the fullness of your deep resourcefulness?
• What are the most critical practices (mind, body, spirit, emotions) for you to attend to, in order to sustain your health and well-being?
• What is it especially important to attend to right now, and what are the things that you need to do differently in your life, in the midst of change?
• How can you help, or contribute, to someone else’s well-being?
• What are you letting go?
• How is your business, or work, changing, and how can you serve your employer or clients even more fully, to support their well-being?
• And, finally, what are the unique opportunities of this time, that you may not have had prior to this pandemic? What can you do now to support your health, happiness and prosperity in the future?

I hope that you find some solace in hearing the wisdom of your soul, as you contemplate these reflections.

This post is about something that I consider and essential self-care practice during the coronavirus pandemic: managing the Bad News Drip Feed while still staying responsibly informed.

This is a long post. You might want to brew a cup of tea. I tried to keep it short, but it’s a complex subject, and there’s a lot of info that felt important.

Harold and I have been under a Shelter in Place order for almost 2 weeks now, with more to come. We had been self-isolating for 10 days before that.

We live in a very small house, and we are in each others’ space nearly 24/7.

That, in and of itself, is enough to trigger the need for some personal boundaries, but when you add the immediate availability of constant news feeds regarding the coronavirus pandemic, it’s a potential hotbed of stress.

Stress takes a toll on our immune systems, and the last thing any of us need right now is a toll on our immune systems.

We weaned ourselves of TV news a few years ago. But now there are cell phones, with every news app you can possibly imagine.

And, we found that without some degree of conscious intention, one or both of us were giving into the temptation of checking the news throughout the day during this pandemic.

It felt like a Bad News Drip Feed. Almost all of the news was something that we could do nothing about, which reinforced the feeling of being out of control.

And, yet, we want to be informed of anything that is personally relevant, and/or that we need to take action on.

It’s a conundrum.

So we experimented with various guidelines to keep ourselves informed and sane, and to give us some feeling of peaceful spaciousness during the days, which helps us nurture a feeling of well-being in chaos.

Listed below is our personal protocol. The one that works for you won’t be the same, but ours is an example that may help you think through what you want to put in place.

And, after I share our guidelines, I’ll list some principles that may help you think about what may work for you and your loved ones.

We’ve worked with this for about 10 days, and so far we are happy with how it balances staying responsibly informed with supporting our immune systems:

• Between 8 and 9 am, I check the BBC app, the NPR app, and the PBS app, all on my iPhone. I get a max of 15 minutes to check and inform myself of the most relevant information. Mostly, I just scan headlines, and when I’m done doing that, if there’s a particularly important article, I’ll scan that, as long as I stay within the 15 minute limit. I chose the BBC because they are internationally focused, and most of my clients are non-U.S. based. I write down anything that I think Harold should know, in a notebook, where I cite the sources so we can refer back later, if necessary. I don’t share any info with Harold unless it is something that we must take action on immediately. I am done and off the news sources until our strategy meeting at 4:30 pm.
• At 4 pm, Harold checks The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune, with particular attention to local and national news that has relevance for us. He also has a notebook where he cites the sources for sharing at 4:30 pm. It helps both of us to make notes because it keeps us focused on what really matters, and it keeps us more factual, and out of the fear rabbit hole.
• At 4:30 pm we have a strategy meeting, share our info, and decide whether there is any action for us to take. (Example: something to stock our house with, that we hadn’t thought of before.) Then we are both off the news feeds until I check at 8:45 am the next day.
• We exercise or take a walk to shake it all off.

This is strict, and it takes a lot of discipline to stay true to it.

But, both of us feel much better in the sticking with it.

In short, it works. It gives both of us almost the whole day and evening news-free, and keeps us responsibly informed with what we need to know.

Our goals were straightforward:

• Be responsibly informed, by getting the news information that we need
• Cultivate the conditions that reduce our stress and allow us to respond rather than react

Here are some principles to think about if you’d like to create your own personal protocol:

• Think of managing the news feed as an essential part of your self care.
• Unless you live alone, do everything you can to be a team within your household. Collaborate with each other to create agreement on protocols, and to keep healthy boundaries.
• Have a strategy session to share information and identify necessary actions. Even if you live alone, I recommend that you consider setting a daily time when your goal is to identify any actions to take. Consciously choosing actions does a couple of things for you. One, it highlights what is within your control and what isn’t. Two, getting a commitment to act in place gets it out of your head and into a concrete action plan; that reduces the ruminating that minds tend to do.
• Find ways to limit your news feed exposure. Examples are the number of times per day that you check the feeds, the number of minutes per check.
• Choose a limited number of only the most essential quality news sources.
• Keep focused on what is relevant and within your control.
• After your news sessions, consider doing something that “cleanses” you of the exposure to the news, such as an exercise session.
• Balance your attention to news feeds with life-affirming activities like walking or cooking or creating art.

Whew, told you it was a long one! Hope it was helpful in some way for you.