Anyone else–after Thanksgiving away from family–feeling a little sad?
My kids have cousins and grandparents they won’t have seen for a year. Though I obviously hate this pain on a number of levels–I love that my kids (including three teenagers!) were visibly bummed when Thanksgiving was canceled with their grandparents, and cousins half their age.
“What’s one word you would use to describe your 2020?”
I heard someone ask this last week, and was a bit stumped. How do you shoehorn this year into a word?
Y’know that feeling when you’re in one of the stressed, worst versions of yourself? That was me a weekend ago.
I had a million reasons. But as the sun sank on Sunday, it was obvious I was falling into classic unhealthy patterns of my personality type.
My father is the broad-shouldered, strong, internal teddy bear type, with fingers like sausages. In my childhood, he was a Midwestern farmer. In his spare time, he donates his mad skills to car repairs of missionaries, single moms, people like that. He’s that kind of guy.
And it’s common for him to come back into the house with blood zigzagging down his leg or seeping through his shirt.
Heartrending news landed in the New York Post this week: Divorce rates spiked 34% between March and June this year.
According to the article, 31% admitted quarantine caused “irreparable damage” to their relationships.
So over here, school has started again. I may have subconsciously avoided my boys’ room this morning, which at last sight looked like someone flipped it upside down and shook it. My daughter’s room was pretty similar as she rushed out the door. Hers just smells better.
What I want to do? Overfunction just a little.
I heard a few months ago Google was experiencing a surge in the terms “beach vacation”. (This was three or so months into the Year that Will Live in Infamy for its Terribleness.) I still have one friend living on the same tank of gas when her state locked down (five months to the tank = problem). So if your phone has been providing a bit of an imaginary getaway lately: I get it. But maybe you’re worrying, “Am I addicted to my phone?”
Even simple excessive screen time reshapes the brain’s structure and function. It inhibits our emotional processes, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control.[i]
This week it passed rather quietly, thanks to quarantine: our 20th anniversary. Holy moly, it’s weird to be this old. (Though yeah, marrying at 19 and 20 years old–that happens.)
But this is what I loved, guys. Even as I typed away at work, as you woke up and poured cereal and forgot to put bowls in the dishwasher, my insides felt like I was bubbling over with liquid gratitude.
So maybe like me, you got the automated notice from the school yesterday that your kids–surprise!–have an extra week of spring break next week, because #coronavirus.
And maybe like me, a member of your family braved Costco this week. Or maybe you now possess a weird amount of toilet paper–which according to a meme I saw yesterday, is now the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
This week, my family and I shoved in the car ski boots and a sled and carefully calculated food to feed a family with three teenagers. In the 2-hour drive through the mountains, cell service dropped abruptly about twenty minutes in. Our friend’s cabin, swaddled in 3 feet of snow, has no internet (brilliant!), no reception, and is primarily heated with a potbelly stove.
The plan originally seemed dicey. My friend with cancer is declining. And after this trip, my husband leaves for two and a half weeks.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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