#Covid19 Small steps to Mental Health
I'm going to drop the numbering of my Mental Health steps as nobody is going to follow them in order anyways...and that is just fine.
I want us all to be gentle with ourselves. Don't feel unworthy, dejected or abnormal if you're not anywhere near following my advice. Or if you want to skip the first two steps and dive into this one. Or if you're still back on step one trying to find the words for your fears.
Forgive yourself if all you can do is watch the news, even if you know you shouldn't. Or if you refuse to watch the news, though you know you should. If you're eating too much, or too little. Sleeping too much or not at all. If you don't want to talk to anyone, or if you can't shut up. If you'd rather finish that crochet project but are instead memorized by Candy Crush.
We will also forgive all others within our circle for behaving in ways we may wish to judge negatively.
Our bodies, our minds, our spirits know exactly what we need to be doing right now to make it safely through our troubles. Let's allow that part of us that resides beyond words and thoughts, judgments, edicts and decrees--let that part of us take control. It will do a fine job.
There's no charted course for dealing with this global stress. We're all in different circumstances. We have arrived here on different paths. We see things differently, feel things different. Behave different.
However, we do share much of the same reality.
Today I want us to focus on the here and now. Because no one, not the politicians, nor the health experts nor the psychiatrists, economists or historians. Not the scientists nor the media. No one can tell us much at all about what our future will be like.
But there are some things we do know. The sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow. Our winter season will flow steadily into spring and then summer (or autumn into winter, if we're south of the equator.) The breezes will blow, the birds chirp, gardens grow. Once in a while there will be a rainbow.
For most of us, the here and now is a warm place, familiar and fairly comfortable. We are fed. We have a pillow and bed. If you're reading this, you have some kind of electronic device and connection to the internet. In the here and now there is no immediate danger. At all. Bombs are not exploding around us. We have water in our taps. It's quiet outside. People are 'sheltering in place'--a warm and cozy phrase. Sheltering...
Over all, here and now is a safe place to be.
Relax into it. Own it. Make it yours.
In my novel OPERATION MAXTRACKER , the world is on the verge of collapse, not from a virus, well not a Corona-kind of virus. In this fourth novel in my BackTracker series, my characters know the world may never be the same again because criminals have hijacked cyberspace, robbed the banks, collapsed the stock market, wiped out justice and democracy. Rewrote history.
One of my favourite characters in my BackTracker series, cyber security expert, Cst. Donald Hayes aka Shrug, is trying to work with his cohorts down east, in the big city capital of the nation. Shrug is a prairie boy born and bred and doesn't fit in well with the city folk, with the politics. The rituals. He complains to his boss.
"We’re
spendin’ millions on this cyberspace shit because in the plush high-rise office
towers in the metropolis, they really think the world will end without it.
F**k! Ask a farm boy how the world will end and he’ll tell you it’ll end when
the sun don’t shine and the rain don’t fall. If the eastern cities were to wake
up hungry, think anyone would care who’s inhabitin’ cyberspace?” OPERATION BACKTRACKER ~Eileen Schuh
We should all take that farmboy attitude.
There is much that is right with our world in the here and now. Let's savor it, acknowledge and nourish it, because from the here and now will spring our future.
Here and Now... has been brought to you by OPERATION MAXTRACKER
Sergeant Kindle is counting on his top secret Operation MaxTracker
team to thwart a surging attempt by criminal gangs to hijack cyberspace and
take control of the world.
The tremendous power of the defensive system the team is
creating and the potential for its abuse, has computer guru, Katrina Buckhold,
on edge. Shrug, Head of Project Security, is supposedly keeping everyone and
everything safe, but based on her past experiences with him, she's not
confident he's up to that task.
Katrina's toughest battles, though, are not against those
threatening cyberspace but against those who are concerned about her ability to
raise her children, and Shrug's not helping with that, either.
Then unspeakable tragedy strikes, stripping all friendships
to the core and laying bare the stunning truths behind the secrets, fears and
mistrust.
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