One Year
One year.
Thursday, March 12, 2020 is when my office closed down over COVID concerns, and thus began the strangest year I, and most of the world, have ever experienced.
I was working as an independent contractor in my friend Karen’s group practice, and she was in Spain visiting her mother. She was watching COVID amp up in Europe, and had first-hand experience with what was coming to the U.S. Karen caught one of the last planes out of Spain before they started closing their borders. When she got back to town, we had a long conversation about the coronavirus, and the kinds of actions it would take to stay safe. We both decided that Thursday the 12th of March would be our last day of in-person counseling until we saw how the country responded to the looming crisis.
As we now know, the crisis was handled poorly. The economy is in shambles, more than a half-million Americans are dead, and we are a more fractured society than at any time since, perhaps, the Civil War.
‘90s theater kids like myself automatically translate “1 year” into 525,600 minutes, thanks to Jonathan Larson’s brilliant “Seasons of Life” song from the musical, Rent. I feel like we have LIVED every single one of those minutes over the past year.
As we reach the one-year anniversary of the start of this crisis, many are looking backwards and trying to make sense of everything that’s happened. I’m doing the same, but it is overwhelming. It’s hard to contextualize the magnitude of our loss. The statistics are certainly sobering: in February 2021, more people died every day from COVID (3,000) than were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor (2,403). More people have died from COVID (529,000) than every American killed in WWII (405,399). We’re approaching the number of American deaths that occurred due to the 1918 flu pandemic (700,000), and may possibly see the loss of life equal to the American Civil War (750,000). We have had more than one American death for every one of the 525,600 minutes of the past year. These numbers are staggering, but they also make it easy to overlook that these are human lives lost - physical people with families and friends and careers and impacts on their environment and community.
For me, the whole of last year is so momentous that I struggle to believe it’s real. As we well know, the global coronavirus pandemic was only part of the blistering inferno that was 2020. Simmering racial tensions in the U.S. boiled over into the streets. Joblessness increased. The stock market performed in a way that was disconnected to the experiences of the majority of the workforce. Suicides and overdose deaths spiked. Authoritarianism in the U.S. gained speed. “Working from home” and “remote learning” and “telehealth” and “essential workers” and “PPE” went from niche terms to the mainstream. To use the apt colloquialism of last year: it was a dumpster fire.
Looking at the lowlights of last year in one rotten bite like this leaves me choking on the anxiety knotted in my throat.
Now, in March 2021, we have vaccines and a new approach to distributing them, and people are eager for life to “return to normal,” but the trauma of the last year may have painted our memories of “normal” with an unrealistically sunny glow. Here’s a recap of where we were in 2019, just prior to the full engulfment of the dumpster: death by suicide continued its steady rise for the 10th consecutive year, income inequality was growing despite signs of an improving economy, money went to a fewer number of people at the top and the middle class continued dwindling, and we were mired in an appallingly expensive yet ineffective health care system. Maybe we need to be a little less nostalgic for “normal.”
This is all pretty grim, so where am I going with this disturbing synopsis of the last two years? From a personal and professional perspective, I propose the following:
Gratitude in the face of adversity is not only a good coping skill, but a way to find balance between the dark and the light. We can identify the good things that happened last year, while respecting all the loss we’ve endured.
2. It’s time to redefine “normal.” Instead of trying to get back to the way things were, let’s take this opportunity to do better.
What good things happened last year? Did you have a birth or marriage in the family? Did your employer learn that you can work flexibly from home, giving you more options for your family? Did you build closer relationships with your family by spending more time together? Do you have greater empathy for teachers, nurses, doctors, coroners, EMT, grocery clerks and other essential workers? Have you found that you’ve reordered your priorities and are better for it? Have you learned to appreciate the outdoors more? Did supplemental money from the government help you pay bills, pay off debt, make life easier, help you get by? Do you have a greater appreciation for art, music, theater, film?
There are so many moments, big and small, that may have been bright spots in this very dark year. Being able to identify these moments, appreciate them, and act on them helps us grow from the struggle and tragedy that was 2020.
As we reflect on the past year, we must also remember that the struggle is not yet over. There is a lot of cleaning up to do; the mental health consequences of last year alone will take a long time from which to heal. We have experienced a global trauma, and there is a lot of work to be done. We will need to practice radical acceptance that things in our lives have changed, and many will have changed forever. But accepting this is also a way to grow, and all living things grow and change in response to what happens around them. If we can embrace the growth, even when it’s painful, we move closer to being the best version of ourselves.
RESOURCES:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/19/ranking-covid-deaths-american-history/
https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/White%20Hate%20Groups
https://www.justsecurity.org/70544/trumps-moves-are-right-out-of-the-authoritarian-playbook/
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/jobless-claims
https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measure/Suicide/state/ALL?edition-year=2019
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/