Last week, I found myself working in an empty park pavilion, in a nearly empty state park, with our two dogs and my laptop. Turns out it was the best place to find my calm and focus. May we all keep calm and responsibly, compassionately talk to each other.
The COVID-19 pandemic news alerts came fast and furious. My heart ached and my mind raced with personal and professional thoughts and feelings. A flood of ideas, reactions and emotions overwhelmed my mind until my head pounded, as if hopelessly holding a swarm of angry bees.
Before I could be useful to my family and friends, my clients, my community, my readers, the volunteers I work with on projects or anyone for that matter, I needed to calm down.
The most important thing was to operate and communicate from a calm, thoughtful, upbeat place, not from a panicked frenzied state — and to catch my breath and get clear on the next most important thing after that.
My typical way to focus is to tune out news and social media, and drop into classical piano music (Free stream: yourclassical.org)
Now, I simply can not look away from the news. And I needed to watch the social media to get information straight from scientists on Twitter and see what people were talking about on Facebook.
Colliding worlds
I hold many roles: Woman, stepmom, wife of a school administrator, conservation science writer, “love blogger,” communications pro representing a college program and a non-profit organization, trained journalist, person of faith, a member of a church family, co-leader of a community garden, neighbor, friend….
One minute, all of those roles and responsibilities were compartmentalized. The next minute, they were smashed up together. I needed to regain my bearings.
The final straw: A social media post that the whole COVID-19 thing was a hoax. My anxiety and blood pressure soared above my head. In that moment, I ended a friendship.
I drove to the state park, figuring I’d walk the dogs. But it was more than that. I ended up in a good, solid shelter made of wood and stone, with no Internet service, among the trees.
As soon as I parked the car beside that pavilion, I wept.
Horror — and the rising of helpers
My heart ached.
Thank God we are healthy.
Each of those “data points” — those numbers we now track hour-by hour — represents a sick, terrified person, or a human being who died alone. A family that can’t properly mourn a loss or even hug each other. Awful.
My family and I are not suffering. We are not on the front lines like the nurses and doctors.
And yet, I’m feeling loss on so many levels.
All of our kids — yours and ours — had entirely different plans for this spring, and our families anticipated happily watching them reach those next milestones.
What will happen now? When will we get back to normal? No one knows.
All of those school children now at home. What can we do for them? Overwhelmed parents.
And, already last week, wonderful news was already coming out that “the helpers” were stepping up in awesome, amazing ways. People figuring out how to get school lunches to kids. People quickly re-inventing what they do in a virtual way. Pastors figuring out how to deliver their church services to people.
I wanted to help, too, but how?
We are resilient. We are adapting. Can we stop bickering and work together to solve the problem? We’ll see.
Solid, still and safe
In the stone and wood picnic shelter, I felt safe, still and calm. Out in nature, and yet protected by a solid wood roof supported by thick posts of tree trunks too thick to reach around. My feet were on solid rock as I sat at a huge square picnic table, before a stone fireplace.
I breathed fresh air, surrounded by woods and birdsong. Trees, paths, a baseball field all within view. The lake just down the trail, on the other side of those trees.
I could breathe deeply and figure out how and what to communicate across multiple audiences.
Keep Calm, I thought over and over again. Keep. Calm.
Keep Calm and do your best on whatever it is you do, what you were born to do, what you are called to do.
It’s a message, a mantra — and a prayer. A plea and hope for the scientists to discover, for the innovators to solve pieces of this wicked problem, for parents to go outside and garden with their children, for people of faith to join in prayer, for the yoga instructors to all remind us how to breathe deeply.
For us all to love and help each other through it.
The single most important message for everyone:
Communicate responsibly and with compassion.
Build with this Tool
Now, more than ever before we all hold the public interest in our fast-typing hands by what we do, what we say, what we post.
Right now, as you use Facebook, you are holding a very powerful tool. You can use it to help.
Or — despite good intentions — to harm. Like a hammer, this tool in your hands can build something beautiful or destroy.
I ask you all, when you post on social media, to please practice responsibility for what you are communicating. Please do so with others in mind.
Sure, we all have our First Amendment rights, and I’d fight for yours tooth and nail.
Until, that is, you endanger my family. Then, you’re on your own.
Public health experts over partisan politics
Part of the First Amendment law has been that it’s neither legal nor morally defensible to yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater because a panicked crowd rushing to the exits is a dangerous situation.
Same here.
Listen to public health officials and experts like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Their guidance must be the clearest, loudest voice you hear. Data and good science matter most now, not partisan politics.
To people who are posting messages contrary to the public health guidance: You are jeopardizing the safety of my family.
How dare you?
Please choose life instead. Choose love over fear.
Keep Calm & Love One Another
Choose to build and help, and support community. Please joke — we need to laugh. Please continue to share those beautiful pictures of how springtime is unfolding all around us. Please create. Please share art. Please share stories.
Dance with a raw chicken around your living room if it feels good. You’re not hurting anyone else — and I need the laughter. (Looking at you, Caren.)
We all need to keep calm and love one another through this crisis.
And that means communicate with each other, now more than ever, with responsibility and compassion.
A Little Silence Goes a Long Way
I would have stayed longer at that beloved picnic pavilion with its huge, square picnic table and memories of the only time my dad met my stepsons, but it was getting chilly. It was time to give the dogs their promised walk along the stream and head for home.
I’ve not been back — nor have I been calm at all times this week. I am scared for all of us. When I’ve teetered on the edge of panic, I’ve managed to pull it together, find some calm, re-focus on my mantra and move forward.
It was only an hour or so at my pavilion bunker — my little fortress of solitude — but it was plenty.