Reopening, Restarting, Reentering: Tasks for the Here and Now
There are lots of ways to reflect upon reopening and restarts and reentries. This piece is an effort to reflect, albeit briefly, on all three. And they move from the general to the personal, consistent with the Pandemic’s impact.
Reopening Schools and Organizations
I have been writing and teaching and speaking about the challenges of reopening schools and organizations in late Summer/ Fall of 2021. And, I have concluded that, sadly, we are not yet paying sufficient attention to mental wellness of teachers, parents and students.
https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/Summer21p12.shtml
Our time has been spent on physical safety and important as that is, it does not replace or enable learning if students are not psycho-socially ready, willing and able to learn.
There is much that we can do to help schools ready themselves for reopening, including thinking in advance about what to expect, communicating and planning across sectors (and busting silos), reflecting differently about the use and messaging of space and place and being cognizant of the key triangle that links feelings, thoughts and behaviors.
And, there is still time to prepare — if we make it our focus. And if we don’t we will forgo effective learning for all of our students.
Restarting Lives
As important as reopenings are and doing them with thought and preparation and planning, I want to focus on two other types of reopenings: (1) the opportunity to restart of lives that have been stalled by chronic trauma created by the Pandemic; and (2) rebuilding relationships.
For many, the Pandemic has created a workplace and career shift — a turning point, a pause, a moment of reflection. Working from home has occurred for many; some have lost their previous employment; some have reconsidered whether what they were doing pre-Pandemic has similar meaning post Pandemic.
As some offices reopen and as schools reopen, many who have worked at locations distant from home are wondering: what happens if I do not return? The choice architecture looks something like this: “Maybe I should retire as a __fill in blank_____ and start a new career or simply spend more time enjoying life. Or maybe I need a better work/play/life balance.”
These are never easy issues to be sure. But, the Pandemic has in essence opened a door to choices we might not have exercised now or ever. The time we have spent physically “confined” has not necessarily been confining mentally. For some, the online version of work has not been satisfying. For others, working from home has highlighted the downsides of their office environment and their teammates and bosses. For still others, working from home has allowed for new skill development and a profound questioning of how we spend our time.
As a former college president who often shared with students/graduates the idea of episodic careers (having had several episodes myself), the Pandemic offers us an opportunity for a new chapter.
But, let’s be real here. Not everyone has career choices. Front-line workers were exposed to death daily, and their career options are not vast in many instances. It can’t be that we create a silver lining (yet again) for those who are privileged and white.
Might we want to consider the door opening for all workers to reflect on what matters to them and how they want to spend the next decade or so of their working lives? Might we rethink where and how we work and how we pay workers (and how much)? Might remote or part-time work take flight? Might this be an opportunity, at the level of policy and practice, to reflect on work environments, pay equity, the import of childcare and aging parent concerns?
Stated another way, the Pandemic would be the catalyst for profound changes in our labor force. Just pause for a moment and imagine that.
A Caution about Work
This restarting in the context of work has appeal but, that proverbial but. So far, the mental health data do not support a notion that workers are so overjoyed — remote workers and in person workers. Indeed, data show that levels of depression among adults is high. And, it is probable that whole segments of society have known someone or been someone who has contracted Covid. And, unfortunately, many of us know individuals who have passed away from the Pandemic, sometimes peacefully and at other times fighting for their very last breath. And, many of these deaths occurred when individuals dying were not surrounded by family and friends. In some senses, Covid deaths can be considered lonely, a reality felt intensely by healthcare professionals who became intimate surrogates.
Instead of work driving change, might it be that illness and death (and its proximity and felt reality and the continuing uncertainty of our times) that are the new drivers in helping us to chart (forcing us to chart) a new pathway? Stated another way, work takes on different meaning when other dramatic changes occur in one’s life.
I suspect, then, that we have it inverted. The Pandemic illnesses and deaths have been the cause for change in our approaches to work. So is the absence of a timetable for when things will improve — something we thought was happening but isn’t.
That doesn’t undermine the rethinking of our work lives; we can and should do that. But, we can see the reasons for it are grounded not “just” in work but in the other aspects of our lives. The Pandemic, in this sense, has shaken our values, has shaken our priorities, has shaken how we want to spend our time and with whom.
It is this latter issue — the personal one — to which I now turn.
Reentering
There are lots of ways to ponder reentering. It is a type of rebuilding. We rebuild houses. We rebuild bridges and infrastructure. We rebuild farms and field destroyed by floods and file. We rebuild medical approaches to illness.
I want to focus instead on reentering and rebuilding in the context of relationships. Unfortunately, the Pandemic has created a fissure in many relationships; families that were together are now separating and divorcing; other families have lost key family members leaving a void that seems near to impossible to fill.
Reentering in these contexts is not a choice per se; it is is necessity because as humans, we are wired for connection. Yet, we have lost our glue — the Pandemic robbed many of what held them together as individuals and families.
Yet, I do see a real silver lining in the context of relationships. During the Pandemic, some people have rediscovered themselves. Others have formed new relationships with existing or new partners. Still others have seen the need to move forward from being “beached whales” in a relationship to a new level of intimacy with more depth and more understanding.
It is remarkable really that from adversity, we can forge new dreams and see parts of ourselves that were previously hidden or tucked away in cabinets. In a strange way, we can use adversity to get a greater understanding of who we are and what we seek in a partner or friend.
What the Pandemic Has Done to Us
For some of us who have been widowed (whether during or caused by the Pandemic), there is a real opportunity to reflect on one’s past relationship(s) and the relationships to come. Call it a cross-road moment to use a trite phrase. Or, to use a Frost-like approach: roads diverged and we can choose a pathway.
And, what the Pandemic has done, I think, is changed how we reflect upon and plan our future. Chronic trauma and toxic stress are drivers for probing the question not just of how we want to spend out time (given life’s fragility) but with whom we want to share what life has to offer in the coming years.
Some may decide that they want to spend more time with those they already know. Time with family and friends may take on new meaning and new urgency. They have no need for a new romantic or intimate relationship. For those who are still with their pre-Pandemic partners, they can find new ways to connect and engage. They can find new levels of intimacy.
Others of us (and I include myself in this group) feel a real need to establish new and deeper connections, having lost loved ones over the past 18 months. It is as if the Pandemic stripped off veneer and we want to go forth as we now are — open and freer and wiser too.
In a sense, the Pandemic is allowing us to reenter ourselves, reconstitute ourselves. That isn’t a bad thing. That is actually a profoundly positive thing. We are, because of the Pandemic, seeing and feeling and experiencing life differently.
And, as we reenter ourselves (internally), we approach our relationships differently. We can discard relationships we tolerated despite their flaws that cut to our core. Or perhaps we are more tolerant of those who were constant irritants. We can be honest about what matters — nothing like illness and death for months on end to help one see what’s the wheat and what’s the chaff.
On a Personal Though Related Note
On a very personal note, I have spent the past 18 months helping students and teachers and parents and administrators deal with trauma and its impact on education and psycho-social development. This work isn’t easy and I have listened to and heard heart-wrenching stories and tried to help people find strategies that enable forward motion. I work with a stellar team of individuals. And, in this same period, I lost my husband of 39 years to Alzheimer’s disease (although to be sure, I had lost him years before) and I lost a relationship that at its best moments enabled me to see that life could be filled with joy again. And, I have moved several times (finally landing in a remarkable place).
In the process of helping others and seeing the possibility of the future and experiencing loss and change, something has changed in me. I have begun to see the need to receive personally what I am giving to others. Call it a realization that kindness and listening and learning and helping are not just what I give but what I need to get. One could easily ascribe this to the reality that you can’t pour from an empty cup and my giving to others requires that I allow myself to exercise self-care. The latter is a point I have made with many caregivers.
But I am experiencing something more than that. I am open to what I have not been open to before: accepting the kindness and warmth of others and recognizing the value of these qualities. In short, the Pandemic has created a change in what I want and what I need and who I am and what qualities I value. Actually, it isn’t a change exactly; it is that I can actually allow myself to be open to who I am and always have been.
I’d call that reentering.
I’d call that a silver lining in what has otherwise been devastating times.
I’d call that “hope,” a belief in a better future.
I’d say that that’s a positive in a world as difficult, challenging and frightening as ours.
I’d say that’s a door opener to a new relationship with another that is intimate and kind and warm and filled with joy and discovery and humor and the wisdom that comes from living life with all its exigencies. And, there’s a newfound ease too, one borne from knowing what truly does matter and what does not.
And, here’s the point: it is a door that but for the Pandemic would not have been entered. The contents behind the wall were always there but they had no way out.
To return to the title of this piece, ponder this.
Reopening, restarting and reentering are words that have new meaning in the here and now. It’s worth our reflecting on them again and again.
