Hello all,
I wanted to share thoughts I have about the beginning of the New Year and the ending of the previous year. In pre-pandemic years our focus was on holiday and winter blues and stress management. I have written tips about how to handle stress and family obligations. I have posted TV spots about the winter blues.

Yes, some of those things from our previous life apply now as we celebrate the New Year, but it is not anything like what we have gone through in 2020. Not to sound cliché’, but there is no precedent for living in a modern-day pandemic.

So first things first, a hearty congrats to all people, young and old for hanging on and trying to go through the motions and survive this tumult. You have most likely felt courage, fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, and confusion. Hopefully, you have also felt some joy and happiness along the way. You have had to perhaps address serious financial stress, food insecurity, Covid itself, job changes, remote learning, remote work, limited time with friends and families, a modified lifestyle, broken hearts, and loss.

Well if that is not a mouthful, I am not sure what is…. That is plenty for any one person to handle, and we have to handle it for months at a time, wow… what a lot of relentless stress and uncertainty.

Some of us have gone thru many of these emotions pre Covid due to life circumstances but now on top of that, we layer the pandemic.

So next, how do we find our fight to continue for another few to several months of Covid 19 pandemic issues?

Let me start by suggesting a few things:

1. 1. Take it one day at a time, sometimes take it one hour at a time, sometimes take life in 15-minute increments, and even less if need be. Nobody is watching, you don’t have to be strong or together every minute. We can be vulnerable, afraid, feel inadequate, or miss something, etc… It is ok for life to make you feel overwhelmed.
   2. Remember who you are and what you are made of… draw on your badassness. (I made this word up.) When have you done something, scary, smart, or dumb and come out on the other side…. You came out on the, “I can do this, or I survived side.”
   3. We are not perfect, and I love not being perfect. It is important to embrace all of you, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
   4. Remember no one has a manual on how to survive a global pandemic that you cannot get away from…. We have done our best. That is all we can do, and some days doing our best is not that easy or may be sloppy. That is ok too.

Resilience means, “An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”. It is the idea, “you got this.” We may not be great at figuring out this living in a pandemic world thing… but we are doing it.

The long and short of this piece is, we are doing our best in a very difficult time. It has been unpleasant and more at times. We need to praise ourselves as we push into the next several months as we hope to reduce the virus…

What does 2021 mean and how do we look at it now? I say it means hope that we will manage this with vaccines and open the economy. Remember you are resilient and amazing too. The next year will bring change again, we can do change…we have been doing change. Let us work together!

Happy New Year to all.
Karen Gallagher