A Letter to our Pandemic Selves

“The pandemic is over.”

Those words from President Biden in a “60 Minutes” interview last week are a bit startling to all of us.

He added in that interview, “We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”

I am less interested in debating the science or politics of this proclamation, and more focused on what that means for you and me to say the pandemic is in our rear-view mirror.

Are we ready to let go of a pandemic mindset?

And what does ‘letting go’ actually mean?

How has the pandemic affected our connections with those around us?

Are there habits we have learned in the pandemic that we now need to un-learn in a post-pandemic world?

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I decided to write a letter to “Pandemic Anthony” as a way to answer some of these questions, and I encourage you to do the same for yourself.

 

Pandemic Anthony,

        I am waving good-bye. Thanks for 2+ years in which you did the best you could to make sense of it all, trying to live fully even when COVID made that really challenging. I bet you remember when even running on the ditches became a game of avoidance as people went out of their way to move far away from one another. Do you remember getting yelled at for violating folks’ 6-foot bubble as you passed them on the trails, wearing a mask and all? I am sure all of this did affect you and now, as we wave goodbye to you, it is a chance to try to notice how to re-engage fully. I know this has affected whether I give hugs or am open to receiving them. I know it has turned a part of me into being wary of being in close proximity with others, but I now need to push that comfort zone and not let this become an excuse to dis-connect.

Post-Pandemic Anthony will need to do this with care for others, knowing that all of us carry trauma from the last years that is going to change how we interact with one another in the next years. Where is that space for us to have conversations about how COVID has affected us and how to navigate these changes, how to heal together? How is Post-Pandemic Anthony going to create space for himself, with his family and with his community to do this vital healing work? Wait, I thought I was supposed to be answering questions, not asking them…

Pandemic Anthony, I want to share gratitude and love before I let you go. I could look at you and these years as “lost” but that would ignore all of the good you helped bring to my life. I want to validate the ways you stood strong and donned PPE to serve COVID patients. I appreciate the efforts you made to create community in a new landscape, never letting go of the importance of bringing people together, virtual or otherwise. I honor the loss you and the rest of humanity endured during COVID.

I need to love you Pandemic Anthony, and will make time and space to do so. I know that this is the only way to let you go and to begin the next journey.

With Love,

Post-Pandemic Anthony