Embracing the Suck-iness of Lock Down 2.0

Today, I just don’t have it! And by ‘it’ I mean, the fire, the passion, the inspiration, the drive, the fortitude to push through. The lock down blahs have kicked in full force.

Lockdown 2.0 is upon us in some parts of Canada during some of the hardest winter months of the year. We have been ordered to stay home as much as possible and only leave the house for groceries, prescriptions and medical appointments, as well as the occasional walk with members of our household. Just like last spring, essential services have been shut down, most of us are once again working from home and trying to create some semblance of a home office. School is still in effect and a lot of parents are helping their children with online learning programs and have been for awhile now.

The isolation, not going anywhere, working and schooling from home blending together with weird and wonky, sometimes totally indiscernible boundaries, lack of outside time in colder climates, lack of everyday human interactions, and the knowledge hovering over us that we will probably be in lockdown for another long stretch of time, before the vaccine makes its rounds and is in full effect.

It begins to wear and today I feel it.

It is important to remember that we are staying at home and restricting contact with our family and friends for very valid and real reasons, to protect those who are more vulnerable and at risk of contracting COVID, to keep the curve down and stop the spread of a deadly virus. There are, also, lots of reasons to be grateful even in these difficult times.

I am at once grateful and committed to doing my part. But I have learned that those feelings can coexist with the feelings that these weird and crazy times bring with it, anger, sadness, confusion, or even just a low mood in general. It's okay. This is hard and we do not have to do this perfectly. It's okay, to embrace the suck.

Sometimes you can’t sugar coat a situation. Sometimes it is just a hard time. Sometimes the world is crazy, weird and wonky place, like right now, and quite frankly, it straight up sucks. Instead of trying to make the best of it all the time. We can lean in to it, for a moment. Allow these feelings of feeling the suck and the hard times and the struggle of it all to surface. We can sit with them, identify them and not shame ourselves for feeling them. Then, once we are ready we can release them. We can scream, ugly cry, fluff the unholy sh@# out of that master bedroom pillow, beat the heck out of rug with a broom, rage clean the house, go for a drive alone in the car, blast Metallica as loud as possible without blowing our eardrums and sing-a-long at the top of our lungs.

We do not have to make the best of it. At least not today. And yes, this will pass and tomorrow will be a new day, but for today we can have some compassion for ourselves and what we are living through and embrace the suck of it all and then we can move on to the next task or moment of the day.

How do you embrace the suck? Share in the comments below.

Take care all, however you’re getting through these lock down, stay at home days.

Much love,

Gabby