I felt overwhelmed today. Incredibly overwhelmed, to the extent that I couldn’t seem to grasp at any hope and just felt like crawling up into a ball to fall asleep. I had work to do and tried my very best to focus on that, but it’s tough to hide from the doom and gloom.

This is the first day I’ve felt like this since the news of the Coronavirus broke and I’m not exactly sure what caused it. I guess it may be the fact that life has changed, or is about to change, significantly for those of us in Europe or that classic British trait of bottling feelings up until they refuse to be bottled any more.

I know that I’m one of the lucky ones who will be okay. I’m worried about those who won’t be, whether that’s because the virus will be critical for them or that they’ll suffer in some other way as a result of this pandemic. It’s overwhelming and hard to admit we’re pretty helpless. So, here I am trying my best to grasp at hope in the midst of a pandemic. 🙂

What can we do to help?

We can offer our help to those in our community who have to self-isolate. We can add items to the food bank trolley every time we go shopping, in the hope of counteracting some of the panic-buying. We can order from local, small businesses, the ones who are going to have to fight the hardest throughout this. We can buy vouchers from local service-based businesses, with the promise that we’ll be back when things get better. We can keep spreading the word that things will get better. We can, of course, wash our bloody hands.

We can be assured that humans, for all our failings, are resilient souls who’ll rise to the challenge of this shift in living. Pubs and clubs will be replaced with living room dances. Girly catchups with arts and crafts. Meals out with at-home baking. Extroverts will begin to discover the power of being alone, perhaps us introverts can share some of our secrets with them, if they promise to do the same when it’s time to come together again.