I think it goes without saying that 2020 was a hard year for most people. The world experienced a global pandemic that rocked our world upside down. But I think even if Covid-19 didn't change things, I would still say that 2020 was one of the hardest years of my life, Covid just exacerbated the challenges I faced. 2020 was the year I felt like I completely lost touch with myself, I slowly felt myself crumbling and becoming nothing at all. In 2020, I experienced the most changes in one year than I ever have before.
I think change can be a really good thing for us, because it helps us grow and adapt to new things but when change is intertwined with grief, it feels like everything is falling a part. In the beginning of 2020, Covid-19 started to close things down. I was supposed to leave for Guatemala for three weeks as part of my teaching practicum for teacher's college but my flight got cancelled. I was going to just visit home for one week before I left but I ended up living at home for the next year. I finished my bachelor of education online at the end of July of 2020. I moved back home and created a space for myself in the basement. I stopped going to church because we weren't allowed to meet in person. In August of 2020, there were nine people living in our small 3-bedroom town house. At the end of September, I started working full-time as a teacher. I taught four different classes and almost every grade from 1-7 throughout the school year. I experienced deep grief that broke my heart. I was not prepared for all the changes that 2020 would bring. I think when we are anticipating change, we tend to respond to the changes in a more positive way. But when change comes all of a sudden, without warning and completely changes your life, you start to feel unsure of how to stand. With each change that came into my life, I was becoming less and less like myself. I started to fear the person I was becoming. Every single change felt like it was slowly breaking me down. On top of it all, grief was a relentless thief. Whatever energy I had left at the end of the day, was stolen by grief. I felt like I needed space to fully let God hold me, to feel cared for and embraced in the midst of my grief but I felt like I had no opportunity to offer that to myself. I needed silence and love, but I had to still help care for my family and make an income. In the summer of 2020 when everyone in my family happened to live at home, I could barely get a moment alone. I felt like the less I could be alone with God and connected to church community, the less I was becoming myself. The more I had to give out of an empty cup, the more deflated I became. 2020 was the hardest year of my life for many reasons. But I know that the change that exceeds everything else, was losing someone I love. No one and nothing could have ever prepared me for that heartache. There's so much more I have to say about my experience with grief, but I think I'll end there for now. My heart is still healing and as time goes by, the more I think I'll be ready to share about the worst thing I've ever known. Talk soon, Shana Shaye
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorRecent Brock & Queen's graduate and Third Year Teacher! I love to talk about life, justice and faith. Archives
July 2022
Categories |