I will never forget the beginning of the chatter about the infamous Coronavirus. To be very honest, I did not really give it much thought. My main train of thought was I was putting it in a category with other scares from mosquitos and birds that were all over the news in recent years such as West Nile and Zoonotic Disease. I am not trying to downplay those by any means but all these things we learned about and the news hyped up never became something catastrophic or global to this degree. Living in California, most of us truly fear a new earthquake based on history. We know that is real and will happen again.

From my perspective, we get used to looking at these things through history and when it comes to viruses I think it is the same. I think people have a tendency to look at history and the severity of things such as the mosquito and bird reference.

In my lifetime, my parents, for all I’ve spoken to, nobody ever experienced or recalls a pandemic, at least not in this country, let alone globally. I know this is an ignorance because we should never say never because the hair on my body still stands up to the thought of 911. I never really believed we would see a terrorist attack on our soil like that, never. I do not think I will ever lose the feeling I felt that morning upon turning on the news. I remember what I was wearing, the cup my coffee was in, and the thought of how this could not be real. I was truly unaware that that was a reality.

Then Covid hit, the unthinkable. Nobody really saw it coming or had a clue how it would alter us or our daily lives. Now, as we try and begin to examine our future, post Covid, we have another multitude of things to consider. We all know we were unprepared, and we had other effects occur during this time. Our nation became further divided politically all awhile we were in a pandemic and disconnected from one another for the most part. Life is forever different.

I have to say that I was one of the fortunate ones when Covid hit. What I mean by that was while many people experienced hardship in their work and career, I was lucky enough to feel the opposite. As a psychologist, I had many people reach out to me, mostly previous clients along with referrals. I had a lot of people who wanted therapy and were struggling. So many of us were feeling Isolated and alone, separated, conflicted, and just so unsure about the future. I did not intend or have any idea this would occur but it it is one of the silver linings that Covid was for me. I got to do what I love to do best, and work with so many people. In addition, I too was overwhelmed and filled will anxiety over this crazy pandemic. I like to be in control and know what is going to happen. This was not a possibility. Feeling this , along with so many others made me more relatable to my clients and my work that much more important. Therefore, working and helping people was useful for me. I am so incredibly grateful for the work that I was able to do and the new perspective I have on where I would like my work to go. Now that we are looking towards the future, we are looking beyond Covid. Many of us are really trying to figure out what that looks like. To be perfectly honest, I do not think we can ever go back to where were because life is now unfamiliar, . Our world is never going to be the same. For example, many people have gotten used to the idea of being at home. They prefer to eat their meals at home and have gotten comfortable having groceries and other things delivered. In fact, many companies have done away with office space to save money and feel it is more economical and better to have their employees working from home. Many employees feel encourage it as well It saves them time and money and alleviates stress. They don’t have to deal with traffic, they done experience the same lengthy routine or process of getting to work, this eliminates a lot of childcare by being at home, not to mention the cost savings related to all of this in terms of gas, childcare, transportation, etc. People say it s allows more time for family, friends, hobbies, or self-care, whatever it may be that they get to have more time for.

There is also a large group of people who prefer the typical or the old normal . May people do better with structure and routine. For these people they feel they strive better outside the home and like the separation and the task of going to work. It is extremely hard to put all of this together because so much makes sense all around and so many people have different opinions. A lot of people feel like it is helpful for the environment with less vehicles on the road. There are a lot of different ideas and theories about what is going on, but the reality is this, we will never be the same and we cannot go back completely.

We have to create our own new norm. Let us face the way we deal with work, family, friends, the way we socialize, and even sex . The way we interact all together is different . We are reinventing our way back into society. With that said, I am trying to look at how I can improve my practice for the new concerns of what we all are facing today and hope to continue with research, new findings, and thoughtfulness to aid my clients in this new next chapter.

I have left out so much. School life is changed, the suicide rate went up, domestic violence has shot up, people were drinking more than ever, drug use skyrocketed, eating problems on a record high, and couple and families either came together or grew further apart. There is a lot of clean up to be done. All of this is a part of how we perceive the world and how we relate, and we have to begin to form a way to addressing and adapting to our changing world. I will address this in my next blog. Thank you for reading.