Covid Quarantine - Week 2: A Letter To My Patients

(During this time of self-quarantine, I have been sending weekly emails to my patients as both an encouragement to them and a way for me to gather some thoughts as we go through this together. Here is a window into that correspondence. )

Hi all, (first posted March 29, 2020)

By now, I hope that all of your grandiose ideas of how you were going to survive this quarantine have mercifully melted away. Whether it was Jack Ryan, Martha Stewart, Mr. Rogers, Shakespeare, or Ghandi you were hoping to emulate... don't. Just don't. Let it go. 

In other words, we are all probably having to grieve, each in our own way, our grandiose notions of ourselves (where's that cape? I know it's around here somewhere... damn, can't find it). We are having to allow ourselves simply to sit, or walk, or run in the paradoxical reality of our being human: fragile at times, strong at others; fearful at times, trusting at others; mindful at times, and mindless at others. Yes, especially in quarantine, we can experience these all on the same day. It's okay. Let it be. 

Grieving is the key to most (if not all) mental health. Even knowing this, we tend to hope beyond all hope to not have to walk through the darkness, to not have to feel the reality of what we are experiencing, and what we might be already having to lose. We tend to wish to arrive magically into the light of "acceptance", just like that-- our cape perhaps a little tattered, but basically intact. "Martha Stewart" might have, say, fallen to the ground behind her kitchen table, but she is still holding up high her cookies in the shape of doilies for all to see, yelling, "I'm okay, I'm okay, the cookies are still impressively delicious... as am I..." 

As am I... not. It's okay. Let it go.   

And let it be. 

Once we have welcomed our very human self in the reality of this moment, as a being that is both amazingly resilient and so very irritably fragile at the same time, then we can figure out how we might live through this time. I am in a prime position to know that each one of you has tremendous gifts and talents that are necessary for such a time as this. Leave your cape at home, and just do that. It's plenty. 

And we will all be the better for it, including yourself. So, let it, um, do? But only after you've let it go, and let it be.

--

Courage as you all go into Week 3. Same Zoom id for all. Same phone number. As I welcome my own humanity (with a modicum of kicking and screaming, of course), so I will walk beside you to welcome yours at such a time as this. 

Peace, 🧼 🙌🏻, 🛌, and social distancing

Deborah