march intention
monthly theme: [shock]
Reading over diary entries from March 2020, I can only follow the breadcrumbs of the horror I left this time last year. At the time, I didn’t know what to write about because none of us knew what we were up against. I could not let myself admit to anything other than confusion and terror just yet.
On March 11, after washing my hands raw for 2 weeks at my barista job, I was fortunate enough for my parents to offer that I stay with them for 2 weeks...11 months later and I’m writing this from my childhood home. There’s some coded metaphor in that experience with lessons about regression, confusion, and relinquishing control, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to unpack that right now…
So why are we here a year later talking about it still? What’s the point of remembering the chaos and fear of March 2020? It’s not easy work, this remembering of arguably the most collectively traumatic experience of our generation.
As of 2020 I had 9 years of therapy under my belt and was ripe for going inward, seeking the dark depths of my subconscious that soon became the only place I couldn’t contract Covid-19. Inside. Inwards. Isolation. Uncomfortable terrain. Terrifying.
Even if you don’t have OCD or immune-compromising chronic illnesses and disabilities, March was mainly about the confusion and the shock for you. Maybe you weren’t isolating yet, but there was a palpable mist of doom lurking--maybe you noticed it, maybe you didn’t.
But no matter your pre-existing conditions or lifestyle decisions, you didn’t know “when this would all end,” and a year later we still don’t. Some experts threw this long-term timeline out in 2020, but most of us couldn’t wrap our heads around such precautions because we were still adjusting to new routines and the trauma of facing a disease that even scientists knew little about. And we still really haven’t had a moment to contemplate and accept the havoc that Covid-19 has wreaked.
I know none of these words are all that comforting or maybe even mobilizing in your healing process. But that’s because week 1 of every month of this Year of Healing is about intention. It’s 7 days to orient yourself with the theme, which this month is ~ shock.
I personally have so many thoughts and feelings about being shocked and what that has looked like over the past year (and the past 4 years), but my perspective is not the point. The goal is to start to think about where you were just a year ago and your relationship to what was happening all around you.
Maybe you think about “shock” or “March 2020” from a more impersonal perspective, thinking in general, factual bullet points of what was happening and what was not. Maybe you think about who you were as a person, what you were going through and what you were planning to do.
The goal is to buckle yourself up for the next 3 weeks--how do you intend to handle the complicated emotions that might come into your consciousness on this journey? Who can you talk to about what was going on in their lives last March? How was the world turning? What cultural phenomena were coming up?
We don’t have to unravel the knot just yet, we’re just reaching back into our memories to recognize that there is a knot and that we intend to deal with it.