Finding Connection in a Pandemic (and after one)

Humans crave connection. In a normal year of growing a family, we tend to rely on our network of family, friends, and communities to help us get through. And in a normal year, there can be circumstances and events that challenge those connections. Strained or severed relationships, moving away from family and support, not knowing what it is you actually need at the moment, transportation, work, schedules, routines, and so many other things can all contribute to how we interact with and how we see ourselves as a part of our world. This past year has not been normal. The COVID pandemic has provided excessive barriers to connection. It has redefined how we interact, how we support each other, and how we seek help.

This month we are exploring and renewing our connections to the world around us - to family, friends, others, and to ourselves. What are the threads that bind us to each other? What does connection look like now? What might it look like in the future? How can we interact and make those changes sustainable? If you are finding those questions and the path to finding the answers overwhelming, you are not alone. Especially on days when everything seems to be keeping us from each other, it can be difficult to move through and imagine what it might look like on the other side. They can also open the door for doubt, failure, and further disconnect. What if the answers seem or are unattainable right now? If you are wondering where to start, I invite you to ask yourself this question instead:

How am I connecting in this moment?

By asking yourself how you are doing something in any particular moment, it can help shift your focus away from what is going wrong and instead bring your attention to what is going right. It can help you find new threads of connection to the world around you, and rejuvenate your existing connections to the people and environment around you as well. I tend to ask myself this question when I feel my self-judgement creeping in, perhaps during a quiet moment when a part of me thinks I “should” be doing something else (sitting on the couch binging a show, playing when I “should” be working), when I am want to be doing something else, or if I am feeling lonely. I often realize I am bolstering relationships to my children, my partner, myself, my family, to my community, my friends, to nature, to whatever it is that I am taking time to do. And sometimes it can be a call to shift into doing something else, which can be powerful as well.

Over the next couple of weeks we will explore various ways of Finding Connection, both during a pandemic and once we are on the other side. We hope you will join us! Let us know how you are doing, and how you are connecting in this moment.