I hope you all are doing well in this new world.
I know a lot of you are out of work. You are feeling restless. Figuring out how to work remotely while you juggle three kids in a distance learning home.
I know that some of you have missed the chance to say goodbye to loved ones. You’ve only seen your newborn grandchild on Facetime and you haven’t yet felt the warmth of their baby breath on your neck. Maybe you had to end your study abroad program too soon after you started. Perhaps you’ll not walk the stage at graduation. Or go to that concert. Or retire quite when you imagined you would.
But maybe you’ve also found courage you didn’t know you had. Maybe you’re learning to slow down. Listen to your friend. Check in on your neighbor. Read that book. Write that book.
There is bitter and there is sweet all wrapped up together in this new world. There is tragedy on a global scale and also present in our personal lives. But there is a sublime beauty, too, right there in the midst of it. Woven tightly together.
I think it’s fair to say that each day of these past three weeks has brought a new wave of reflection, accommodation, emotion and understanding. It’s been a lifetime. And it’s been just a moment.
What does a photographer do when there are no photos to take? How does a speaker speak when audiences no longer gather? The psychological stages of grief have played out like a textbook in this house and in every other house on every other street. And still, the dance of the bitter and the sweet. The beauty and the pain.
I see it in our lives and I see it in the eyes of neighbors who walk by and pause to visit, from a safe distance. It’s on the television, but also on my laptop screen as I catch up with friends. And it’s on the faces around our kitchen table, where we’ve been seated together more often than usual.
Nothing like this has happened before.
It takes time to find your footing, and I think…for now…that I’ve found mine. There is a process that unfolds as we adjust to a new normal, even as that normal shifts each and every day. It’s that world of change that I’m ready to explore. The honesty to confront fear and insecurity. The courage to pivot and adapt. The vulnerability to walk into an uncertain future, because there’s nowhere else to go.
We’ve started a podcast.
How Life Changed: Stories of real people and how their lives changed as a result of COVID-19.
It’s a pretty raw work in progress…let’s call it real…as we learn the new to me terrain of podcasting. But it’s storytelling, which is what I love. And the stories reveal who we are and what we are going through. I’m all in.
I want to ask you a few things as we find our footing…
Listen to an episode. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, TuneIn + Alexa, or on our own dedicated website.
Leave a rating and review. This simple step helps us gain visibility for the project.
Share it out on social media and help us spread the word. They can’t love it if they don’t know about it.
Tell us who else we should talk to. I’m casting a wide net. I’ve already interviewed a nurse, an Olympic athlete, a journalist, a high school senior, an educator, a theology student and a hip-hop artist. I have lined up a counselor, a fulltime RVer, a storefront pastor and a stone mason from central Kansas. But I need to know who you know. Help connect me to a story that needs to be told. Send me an email. Text. Direct message me on social media and help me tell the stories we need to hear and capture the history we need to document during this time of change.
This is our story. And we’re going to tell it.