I am part of an amazing group of online writers that is given a prompt weekly and asked to do a free write for 10 minutes. We then share anonymously and give thoughts on each others writing. It isn’t about creating the best piece of work, or crafting everything just so, it is simply the invitation to show up, to let the floodgates open and to see what happens. It is amazing to me what pours out when you give yourself direction, time and space.
I am sharing my pondering for last weeks prompt hoping you will join in. I feel like so many of the ponderings, the thoughts we would normally share over coffee, over a playdate, on a walk aren’t happening, so I am opening up a broader conversation. I would love to hear your response to the questions, thoughts and ponderings. I am welcoming you to a collective coffee date- pandemic style :).
I sit here…
I sit here so many things left undone.
I sit here finally in the office after so much time at home.
I sit here uncomfortable in my own skin in such literal ways, this pandemic has made me more slothlike, less movement in all of my life, no delicious stretches, little movement, no sweat that restores and nourishes and no reaching… simply sitting… so much sitting.
I have started to do yoga again, to delight in my body, to feel the stretch in the inner muscles, to remind myself that I am made for movement, and the sun and the warmer air invites me to walk and to find my way onto the bike again.
I sit here wondering if I will ever feel what I did pre-pandemic. If I want to. I sit here wondering where the past year has gone and yet not wanting it to be gone yet… and fearful of what this clunky in-between time will reveal… as people move from what was to what is to what will be.
Will we remember kindness, to our bodies, to one another, will we remember what it is like to interact, what will we keep from our pandemic time, what will we gladly get rid of, what lessons have we been reminded of, what lessons would we rather have forgotten.
How are we to soothe our collective nervous systems, to find new ways to relate, to remember what it is like to hug a friend, to sit close, to feel another human in our space and to welcome vs. recoil in fear.
What will it be like to walk down the street and not wonder if we should or shouldn’t wear a mask, or what does the CDC or local health authority say about this activity… what will it be like to have our lives back in a new way, what will it be like now knowing there are so many fissures and cracks in relationships, so many things that have happened, so many new narratives, so many new ways of learning what life looks like from another’s perspective.
I sit here and wonder what this collective trauma will unearth, how/if it will be used to heal or to harm. How what we have learned about trauma, about how we respond to trauma, about how we are to care for ourselves and others, about how little control we have, about how much control we have over certain aspects of our lives… learning to live in this in-between.
Every generation it seems has their galvanizing moment/thing… wars, famine, natural disasters… now add global pandemic, racial unrest, a radical remembering of what our collective history truly is and what we have suppressed. How will this be remembered, how will this be talked about.
Who will this show us to be?
Will we be another “Greatest Generation” at the end of the day did we care for one another, did we show up in ways that are meaningful, did we allow circumstances to change us, to shift us to mold us.
As I sit here I ponder all of these things, connected by a keyboard, and this ethereal internet that then places these words in your hands, in your heart and I wonder… what will your answer be to this prompt?
Erica Staab 