Thanks Lizelle! It's always good to hear from you. What I'm starting to realize about the pandemic is it inflicted a lot of deep financial, emotional, and psychological trauma on people. I think the behaviors we experienced after the lock-downs were lifted was the effects of that trauma resurfacing. I'm starting to see some people in our lives venturing out and becoming more like the people they were before all this. I know from particularly stressful events in my life that we're in a kind of survival mode during the stressful times and then the trauma surfaces after the stressor is gone. I had a corporate job that nearly broke me down during 2011-2013 and it took close to a year to fully recover from that. The pandemic was way worse than that for many people.
It sounds like you and your community are healing nicely! I'm glad to hear that. Sometimes the only option left is for the community to come together and solve things themselves. Things in our area are still quite bad. There's a lot of apathy. Many people around us still have hope that the police, politicians, and social programs will save them. They keep electing the same crooked politicians hoping "it will be different". We need block watches for crime and citizens that are willing to ban together to rebuild the fabric of the neighborhoods.
I really hope you can establish a routine of mediation again! I was trying the app Headspace for a while but it got old after a few months. I just fell back into my usual routine and have a new appreciation for it.
Thank you for reading this! Yes, I'll have to revive the memory project again! That would be a fun thing to do this summer. Take care!