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Stay Safe. Stay Home

It has been twelve months since my mind broke. Twelve months since my grip on reality slipped and I was delusional, paranoid, panicking and suicidal. Scarily suicidal. I made a choice to make a phone call instead of walking out of my house and ending my life. It doesn't feel like twelve months, it feels like yesterday and twelves years ago simultaneously. Today I am well. My mental wellness is so much better. I am thankful for being functional, but as I have said in the past you can be functional, but still be unwell. I am beginning to transcend the functional and find myself more thriving. Enjoying moments with my children, my partner. Taking the time to catch my breath in the relentless busy of life. But now that the world has plummeted into a global pandemic, I have been anxious about how I would navigate the change in routine for our family and tackling homeschooling with the children. I am super happy to report that everyone is going great, I am proud of the transition the children have made to their online learning. We are reasonably tech savvy here, so it has been almost seamless getting everyone onto the online classroom platforms. I am not adhering to a crazy schedule of homeschooling, we are just getting it done at our own pace. The collective slow down on life has been a welcome breather to the hamster wheel of school drop offs and pick ups, lunch making and bag packing, notes and newsletters. I could have done with the enforced "go slow" revolution this time last year. But life unfolds in the way it does, and sometimes we don't get a say in what happens next. I am less worried about the coronavirus taking me out than I was worried about me taking me out. So all the collective panic of the last few weeks, has quietly passed me by which I am thankful for. Though there have been times I have been a little upset not being able to find certain groceries, and the product limits are frustrating when you have a large family. But it is what it is. We just make the best of it. I think everyone is making the best of the current circumstances we find ourselves in.
The uncertainty can be an anxious time, especially if you're one of those people that now find themselves without work. We have been very fortunate that my partner works in the essential part of retail, so he still has his job and I currently receive a partial carer payment, which I have  received since our eldest son was diagnosed with moderate to severe Autism. So financially we have no burden, unlike many other people. We have always had to be careful with budgeting etc, and that will continue, but we aren't at any risk of losing an income stream for the minute.
I have come to embrace the uncertainty. Who knows what next year will look like? After this collective global reflection, I do hope we are kinder, compassionate and more capable to extend emotional, mental and physical resources to our fellow humans. Maybe it's naive of me. But I have hope. An old Italian proverb I heard is "Hope is the last thing ever lost". Well the internet told me it is an Italian proverb. Either way the sentiment feels right and appropriate. It's strange how the world and life looked and felt so different from a month ago. Stay safe folks. And stay at home.


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