I’ll be honest, I’m not doing the best emotionally or mentally with our physical distancing measures to help protect us from CoronaVirus COVID-19 but I imagine that I’m not the only one. In fact, I know I’m not the only one thanks to social media. I dread to think what this experience would be like twenty years ago before SoMe!!! Deep breath!!
We are almost two weeks into Ireland’s physical distancing measures to flatten the curve on the CoronaVirus COVID-19 and while I’m adhering to all of the measures, as best I can, grocery shopping in Lidl was a huge challenge, I am needing to put more and more additional measures in place to protect my mental health.
Normally, I don’t have much human contact with people outside of my house anyway because I’m a stay at home parent, still, and any volunteering I do is 99% of the time from a computer. So, I clung to my weekly coffee morning with humans because it’s a lifeline for me. Losing the tiny bit of social contact I had has been a big blow for my emotional health.
I’m trying my best to help me stay on top of it: I make sure I get out in the morning for my daily walk and it’s been nice to have so much sunshine for it, I’m trying to stay connected with friends via text, phone and video. I’m trying to focus on what I have to do to protect my family and others, and making sure that my teenagers are doing ok.
But it is a challenge. I’m struggling to find a reason to get up in the mornings and because I don’t have to get up for the school drop off, I’m staying up a bit later, I’m not sleeping very well because of some pains in my joints, which is adding to the struggle. My teenagers are very self sufficient and really don’t need me much at all.
Once I talk myself into rolling off the bed, I’m filling my day with a little house cleaning: not too much, I’m pacing myself so as to leave something to do for another day. I thought I would spend lots of time writing blog posts but that’s not happening either. I’m dipping into one of my hobbies: scrapbook style photo albums, that only gets done during school holidays but I also need to be in the mood to tackle it. Initially I had tried to stay off social media but I find myself scrolling desperately trying to find entertainment, hope, inspiration, comfort and it has been comforting to see so many come up with such great ideas to help others and keep people motivated.
This piece in particular from Diabetes Daily was so comforting.
I know how important all of these measures are to flatten the curve and protect everyone around me. I know that if we don’t do this we will end up in a more severe lockdown. So, I’m hanging in there and I repeat to myself “This too shall pass”.
