I read a piece in the Post today that put our couple of weeks of social distancing in perspective and another one that was an ode to long walks. There was also a Q&A with Meghan Leahy today about parenting during coronavirus. And finally, there was also this article about defining our uneasy feeling right now as grief and this one about keeping our cool while cooped up that gives tips for good self-care..

We will get through this time and return to a life similar to the one before. There may be scary circumstances (of lost pay or sick relatives), and sadness and loss for some families. While some may be spared the worst outcomes, all of us will have experienced something unprecedented in our lifetime. There is a level of trauma for all of us with an event like this that we won’t fully process until it is over. There is an underlying level of stress anytime we enter a period of unknowns, especially for parents.

Please take the time to acknowledge this and find activities that help you relax (home yoga and meditation, Zoom happy hours, walking outside, evening cocktails, memes—you don’t have to aim too high, or be too high minded). Your children will look to you for cues and their resilience will mirror yours. To borrow from the airlines, please secure your oxygen mask before helping others around you. We are all feeling pressure to home school, keep up our work output, and parent AND we are having to do it with less social support that usual. So don’t try to do it all every day. Forgive yourself for the times you fall short of your daily goals. We are all learning how to live this way and it is only temporary, so we don’t have to perfect it. We just have to get through it with as much grace and grit as possible, forgiveness and a sense of humor for ourselves and others when we fall short, and a willingness to wake up and try again the next day. If we model this for our children, they will come out on the other side of this with greater resilience.