AOC and a voice for those who were dismissed

It’s been more than fifteen years and one minute is still as clear as if it happened a moment ago.

I was attending a public comment session at a European Parliament regarding the war in Iraq, civilian casualties and the US misinformation about weapons of mass destruction. One of my closest friends at the time was an Iraqi refugee and his brother had recently been killed by American troops who mistook him for someone they were looking for. Shoot first and ask questions later… and all that.

High-ranking US military and civilian officials had come to answer questions from the European public and this was supposed to be a rare opportunity for open discussion of the issues with those who actually had the power. I managed to get a seat in the question gallery due to connections within the high-powered charity community. My US passport and press credentials didn’t hurt either.

The session lasted two hours and there was very little critical discussion allowed. Everyone had been pretty thoroughly vetted and most of the questions from the “public” were sycophantic opportunities for officials to regurgitate the Republican party line in Europe. Finally, toward the end of the session, I got one of the coveted comment spaces, and goddess, was I ever ready.

I had a stack of documented cases of avoidable civilian casualties three inches thick in my hands with my friend’s brother on top.

Public domain image

I am not good at public speaking or even speaking in general. My forte is much more the written word. I tend to choke and forget my vocabulary and stumble around without a clear goal even just trying to hold my own in a political discussion among friends. So, I had prepared for this.

I took deep breaths as I was called to stand and then I put it out there. My statement had to be phrased as a question, and it was, but it contained enough data to make clear that platitudes weren’t going to work here. The mediators were so shocked that I actually got to the end of the two sentence question before the shouting started and I was drowned out.

I had done it. The words were on the record and on national TV and I hadn’t choked. My heart was pounding. It was a tiny thing, but at least I had forced the people in power to confront the lie that this was a relatively clean war, where only the guilty suffered and the oppressed people of Iraq were supposed to be grateful for occupation and viciously negligent violence.

The officials had to spend the next ten minutes uncomfortably wriggling out of the issues I had raised. But of course, it was buried in the end. That was just all the power I had at the time.

And that isn’t actually the memory I mentioned in the first line. What stands out most clearly to me isn’t the fact that I managed to put the truth out on national TV and in front of US officials. I was standing out in the entrance hall of the Parliament after the event and I was cornered by a member of Parliament from the far left who had been trying to milk the anti-war movement for media attention without actually helping.

Several members of Parliament from the pro-US, right-wing party walked down the steps from the main hall and passed us. One of them turned around, pushed his face close to mine and sneered in a loud voice that cut through the space, “Disgusting bitch! It speaks our language!”

His cronies chuckled and they left. I stood frozen and speechless.

I had spoken in English during the public session because the guests were US officials and English was allowed. But I had been speaking Czech to the leftist MP. That was what the right-winger had meant. He was surprised that I was bilingual. But he had put it in extremely insulting grammar, calling me “it” and clearly putting me in the place of a sub-human.

His companions had laughed and the leftist MP who had pretended to be sympathetic stepped away. Far from standing up for me, he disappeared.

I was a blind woman who had the international microphone for a fleeting moment and I had been slammed back into my place with public humiliation.

No, I wasn’t surrounded by people mocking me or supporting me. I was suddenly simply dismissed. Everyone’s back seemed to be turned to me in the entrance hall. The journalists who had previously been interested in my documentation were no longer interested. I had been demoted from upstart to irrelevant and then brushed away.

That is the part that makes the memory stick so painfully—the dehumanization followed by very effective dismissal.

When Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was demeaned with sexist language on the steps of the US Capitol building last month by Congressman Ted Yoha it was the same kind of moment. It was a man in power slapping down an upstart woman, calling her a “F—ing bitch” and “disgusting.” It was eerily reminiscent of my experience all those years ago.

At first AOC didn’t respond publicly. She probably didn’t want to stoop to his level. And that is understandable. I didn’t respond either. In the moment, I choked as usual, and later when I could have thought through a response, I no longer had a microphone or any platform to speak of.

But I very much appreciate Ocasio-Cortez’s words from the House floor several days later. She laid the issue out in no uncertain terms. Having experienced much the same thing in public and a lot of less-public abuse over forty-four years of being a disabled woman, I know exactly what she meant when she said, “It’s cultural.”

It wasn’t just about me being a woman or disabled, of course. I was a political opponent of that rude MP. But he did not and would not—particularly in the somewhat more staid European context—treat a man like that.

Ocasio-Cortez said, “Men harass women daily and feel they can go unpunished,” I know exactly what she means.

I have often wished I had the platform, the mficrophone and the power to talk back and to verbally tear up sexist, ablest and racist bullies in public. But the truth is I don’t have the seat-of-the-pants eloquence either, not in spoken words at least. Ocasio-Cortez has that and she now has the microphone and the platform too. She uses it well and I’m one more woman cheering her on.

Alexandria Ocaso-Cortez continues to be a voice for those of us who have been dismissed and trampled too many times. And she is one of those who reminds me there is still much worth fighting for.

The exuberant flourishing of summer

There is a bulging, bursting, vining, tangling, wild spirit in my garden. Or I should say there are a myriad of spirits in my garden.

The middle of a summer with enough moisture is the time when it is the easiest for me to have an animist worldview. It is easy to see the will power and personality of each different kind of plant and animal. It is easy to relate to them as members of a family to which I too belong because they are so full of life.

Image by Arie Farnam

Our ducks have produced babies and the tiny speckled ducklings hop and tumble through the riotous foliage in the corners of the garden.

The combination of long, warm summer days and enough rain makes for an abundance that is overwhelming and often too much. At some unremarked tipping point, my job went from trying to coax plants and animals toward thriving to the tough love of cutting away the excess, sometimes with tender care, sometimes in wide slashes.

Many things grow better when they are trimmed back. The tomatoes would quickly mold and rot without my careful pruning. Many of the herbs would just lie in tangled, bug-infested heaps if I didn’t trim them. And of course, there is a profusion of weeds that would gladly overtake and shade useful plants if I let them.

But I don’t cut where I don’t have to. That is a common mistake among modern gardeners and farmers. There is an assumption that just because I don’t need that plant. it shouldn’t grow. But the fact is that this flourishing, bountiful life force abhors bare soil. There is nothing so unnatural as bare dirt in a mid-summer garden.

So, wherever I can, I let something cover it. I may pick and choose and weed out but something ends up covering the soil.

This year it sometimes pains me to cut back exuberant plants that are not strangling weeds. The past three years brought drought and while weeds grew where I watered, my garden was not nearly so lush. After a time of scarcity we have a tendency to allow excess, even to the point that it isn’t healthy.

My husband says this summer is the way summers were here when he was a kid—several days of sun and then thunderstorms and drenching rain. Artificial irrigation was once almost unknown in Central Europe. Farmers used to say the lightning made the fields fertile and apparently there is a bit of scientific truth in that, beyond just the fact that after lightning comes the rain.

This year our garden is a little bit much. Everything is growing like crazy, spilling out of containers and beds. I frantically pull weeds, clip and mow and still barely keep ahead of a green tide that threatens to overwhelm me. Untended areas have turned into impenetrable jungles of brush and herbage six to ten feet high.

I sense the plants as I move about the garden, each one has a distinct spirit. Some are eager, some pushy. Some are much more timid and delicate. But they are all aware of each other. That doesn’t mean they won’t take over the space and strangle out a less assertive plant. There is a harmony here, but it isn’t entirely equitable. And neither am I.

Still I don't sense resentment from the plants that I cut away anymore than I feel that the invasive weeds mean to be aggressive. We are just all in it for survival. Ascribing spirit to plants doesn’t mean anthropomorphizing them. Plants are plants not humans and they view the world from that perspective.

This wild, luscious growth is an expression of the plants natural state of being. Their desire for life and growth doesn’t negate their interconnection and a deeper understanding that every other part of the garden is connected and necessary, even the woman who weeds and clips.

Compassion and politics in the time of coronavirus

This is not the post I want to write today. I feel like I’m watching my country disintegrate. Throughout all the crises in the past thirty years, the situation in the United States has never felt more desperate, and I wish I could write only words of encouragement and hope.

In these days of coronavirus, racist violence, political tyranny and thoughtless posturing, we wish we had a president like Theodore Rosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, one who would call the country to courage and mutual aid. My home town was recently hit with a massive spike in COVID-19 infection because of the unwise and politically motivated actions of church leaders, including laying on of hands to heal the sick and large group events.

Among most people I know, there is so much fear. Fear of the virus. Fear about the election. Fear over lost jobs and economic collapse. Fear of the police. Fear of rioters. Fear of people with guns. Fear of people reacting to fear.

And yet the thing that makes me most afraid isn’t coming from strangers or Republicans or a virus. It’s the desperation and anger numbing those people I identify with most to suffering other than that specifically sanctioned by the cause. And that’s why this isn’t just an encouraging post about banishing fear.

Creative Commons image by Matthew Kenwrick

I can’t speak for American conservatives and Republicans, but those of us who are in the US called “liberals” or “progressives” like to think of ourselves as the good guys. I mean we really REALLY like to think of ourselves as the compassionate, nicer side of the political divide.

I don’t mean that we just think that we’re right. I assume everyone thinks they’re right. But we also think we’re nice and empathetic too. It comes with the political territory.

And I am not above this hubris. I not only think that being anti-racist, pro-universal health care, proactive on climate change, anti-corporate and so forth are all factually and morally correct. I also think these positions are more compassionate than the alternatives available.

Those who call themselves “conservatives” often make noises about how compassion is good and all, but sacrifices must be made for some other greater good, usually economic prosperity, and that it is more important to ensure that people who work hard get what they deserve than it is to be compassionate for those seen as being less hard working.

Every issue that comes up in America is supposed to be drawn between these lines. So, when Trump belittled the threat of COVID-19 and delayed the US response to it, liberals and progressives were quick to raise the flags of compassion for those most vulnerable to the virus.

In Europe the political sides haven’t been so clearly drawn on COVID-19. Many liberals cautioned against draconian lockdown measures that were likely to harm the most vulnerable and conservative goverments enforced lockdowns, workplace and school closures as well as masks. Europe has a culture in which listening to doctors and scientists is the default, regardless of one’s political stance—at least in theory.

Large scale lockdowns were enforced for more than two months in most places and they proved effective, even in places like Sweden where personal social distancing wasn’t mandated for those at low risk. Except for parts of Italy and Spain where the virus struck before it was even remotely understood, Europe has avoided chaos and massive death tolls.

Over time, European doctors have determined which measures are most effective and which are unnecessary or have harmful side effects, and some measures have been phased out. In the US media and blogosphere there is a lot of discussion about how masks and social distancing are likely here to stay, even beyond a specific vaccine for COVID-19.

But Europeans have loosened up interpersonal interaction already in favor of large scale-social distancing in shopping centers, public transportation, mass events, crowded factories and other hotbeds of contagion. Interpersonal interaction was relaxed a month ago where I live and no spike in COVID-19 cases has resulted.

The Atlantic divide has meant that I get some flak from American friends for discussing which measures have been phased out locally due to nasty side effects or ineffectiveness. I find myself with a sudden, uncomfortable insight into why conservatives often scoff at liberal claims to compassion because of our vehement (and yeah, sometimes self-righteous) insistence on particular social norms.

In American liberal circles, it is mandatory to be compassionate about the two to four percent of the population (depending on the strength of your healthcare system), who could die from COVID-19. It is not so encouraged to be compassionate about people with anemia and other blood-oxygen conditions who are at risk while wearing masks or about the relatively young and healthy people who have experienced cardiac arrest due to attempting to run or cycle wearing a mask or about the countless people pushed into psychological instability and suicide risk due to extreme isolation.

It is not okay in liberal circles to voice compassionate concern over the people hit by the economic crisis, if that entails any criticism of COVID-prevention measures. Voicing compassionate concern for people who cannot stay home with their children and survive at the same time is not much encouraged.

It isn’t good to mention that social distancing, which we blithely predict will be permanent, is devastating people who are already socially isolated due to mental illness or disability. It is definitely not okay to talk about the rising tide of suicide figures or to compare any of this to the number of COVID-19 deaths, which while equally terrible, are still a small fraction of the preventable deaths in our society. (And I’ll get flak for that statement alone, despite the facts.)

While I do think I’m personally compassionate, I have never felt that this requires tolerance and empathy for everyone. I am not tolerant toward intolerance and never have been. I am not even very compassionate toward people who are clearly suffering under a burden of too much privilege and too little introspection. But still the current compassion exclusivity is disturbing, even more so because it is fueled by feelings of desperation and political anger.

It has become more about politics than about compassion. Compassion is now rarely referenced unless it suits the cause. Do we truly care about protecting the vulnerable or just about combatting Trump and his supporters, because of everything else Trumpism has brought?

Each camp in the US wields the virus like a political weapon. The conservatives are suddenly into hugging strangers in crowds. (Just imagine explaining that to a time traveler from a year ago.) And liberals are into putting a cold hand in the face of anyone who doesn’t wear a mask, regardless of the circumstances.

It isn’t hard to generate empathy for my freaking-out liberal friends and family. This is a depressing year for American liberals and progressives. We are facing a grim election in which all we can hope for is the defeat of a horrible regime by a somewhat less horrible one and we won’t succeed even at that unless we can muster a lot of enthusiasm for it. That likely plays into the politicization of COVID-19 response.

But even so, the speed with which we began erecting walls on compassion leaves me cold. In some ways this is lonelier than all the months of coronavirus lockdown.

Given my vision impairment, social distancing and masks really do mean that I can’t interact with people in person. If people sit six feet away, I can no longer sense their mood or emotions. If people wear masks, their voices are usually so muffled that I can’t hear the non-verbal cues. I can pay for groceries, but I can’t have a real conversation.

Sitting close, an occasional hand on a shoulder, the subtle tones of voice—that’s my version of eye contact. Social distancing has taken that away entirely. And I’m told it will never be back.

I worry about the people with disabilities like mine who don’t have a spouse and kids at home. If social distancing is here to stay, will they never feel the touch of a human hand again? So many people with disabilities live alone without a lot of family or community support. People talk big about caring, but the truth is that mostly people only hang out with those they think are popular, successful and attractive enough.

A lot of people who are just as friend-worthy fall through the cracks even in normal times. And now… I don’t even want to contemplate it.

I am not saying we shouldn’t do social distancing or wear masks. In many places, particularly in the US right now, we have to. Listen to medical advice. Be careful particularly in areas hard hit by the virus. But let’s also sit a moment in stillness and think on what protecting the vulnerable really means.

I’m not saying you have to empathize with everyone. Compassion fatigue is a thing and likely part of the culprit here.

If someone is flaunting risky behavior—forcing people into hugs, breathing in people’s faces in public, intentionally creating large gatherings to make a political point—you’ll have to protect yourself first and save compassion for those who are just struggling. Still, a less biting reaction toward conservatives might just help them come down off of their very dangerous wall on COVID-prevention.

Most importantly, let’s think about compassion for those who fall through the cracks in these very troubled times. Let’s be gentle. Let’s include as much as we can. Let’s remember that human contact is a basic human need. Long-term denial of human contact has documented, medical effects and can eventually lead to death, and not just through suicide.

My class of mostly elderly women studying English as a foreign language met just once last month. I offered my veranda, which has a table and chairs and a canopy of lush grape leaves. Attendance was definitely voluntary, given that several students are over seventy and one over eighty. But everybody came. They seemed very much in need of the in-person connection.

One of the students has a husband who has had a bone-marrow transplant and is at substantial immunological risk. She sat an extra distance from the rest of the group and we all wore masks at first. But then several students are hard of hearing and they rely on watching my mouth for English pronunciation. I was also having a lot of difficulty hearing the students and reading their level of comprehension with the masks and the distance.

In the end, the one with the vulnerable husband and the one who is a nurse decided we could do without the masks but remain at a distance. Everyone was gentle and considerate.

As the teacher, I am able to set the tone in these classes and I have always set a standard in which everyone’s needs are heard and cared for. If compromise is made, it is initiated by those most vulnerable and not imposed upon them. I think it is part of why the same students come back year after year.

Most of my European students would likely identify themselves as conservatives, though they take universal health care for granted and are serious about COVID-19. I wish their culture of consideration was more widespread in all political camps.

We are living with terrible risks every day. COVID-19 is just one more factor. It isn’t a small one, but it isn’t the only one by far. Saying “we are all in this together” should mean more than just thoughts and prayers. It should mean real care for those hit hard by the virus and by our attempts to combat the virus.

Mama, why are they killing black people?

I had a different blog post for this week but shit happened. There are things that can’t be ignored. Still, I am very far away from the terrifying events going on in my home country and I don’t have much that is new to say.

I’ve already written about white privelege and coming to understand the underlying structural racism I didn’t used to know existed. I’ve already written about my path out of ignorance. And a lot of people are writing those things now, as they should.

And really, do we need more white people yammering on about our feelings or opinions about black people being murdered in a structurally racist society in which we are all complicit, whether we want to be or not? On the other hand, silence doesn’t work. White people just carrying on as usual won’t help, even from ten-thousand miles away.

So, I’ll let my kids, who aren’t black but also aren’t white, have a go, in so far as they can.

My kids don’t watch the news much. I have tried to introduce them to the issues of the day, but usually they refuse. We live in Central Europe, far from the current tensions in the United States. They both have significant learning disabilities and although they are nine and eleven, they don’t follow current events. I fear that they are particularly unprepared for the harsh realities of adult racism.

Even so, somehow the events in America filtered through into their media world of YouTube slapstick humor, video games and Likee clips. Today during an increasingly rare quiet time before bed, my daughter asks, “Mama, why are they killing black people?”

I’m careful with my answer. She has been very negative about her own background and appearance lately. Frankly, I’m wary of painting too negative a picture of the racism situation—not because I think it is anything but catastrophic, not because I don’t think kids should be educated about it—but because my first concern must be for the child right in front of me, her shaky self-concept and her propensity to interpret racism against people of color as another reason to hate her own body.

“A lot of people are prejudiced or don’t like people who look different from them,” I say, turning toward both kids. This is not the first time we’ve had this conversation by a long shot.

“I told you it’s better to be blonde,” my daughter puts in. “I wish I was white and blonde. I wish my hair was straight.” And it definitely isn’t the first time she’s made those statements, but it is telling that white police shooting black people in her mother’s far away home country sets this off..

She is obsessed with ultra-blonde YouTube celebrity kids and constantly talks about wanting to bleach her dark brown hair.

“You are beautiful, honey.” I tell her and add quite truthfully, “and people in America are going to think you should be a model.”

COVID-era Black Lives Matter demonstration in Madison, Wisconsin. Signs read “I can’t breathe,” “The Divided States of America” and “Is this the American dream?” - Creative Commons image by Ken Fager

“Shhhh!” she hisses, ducking her head in the bedroom, as if someone might overhear. “Stop it, Mom! Don’t say anything about it. I don’t want anyone to know.”

In recent weeks, her fear that someone might realize she isn’t just golden brown in color but specifically Romani has become extreme. She shushes me in panicked whispers if I mention anything about her birth culture, even in private. That’s why I don’t use her first or last name or ever speak or write about any of this in the local language, even though a great many people in town do already know.

It hurts my heart, even if I know this is a common phase adopted kids go through. We did all the things you are “supposed to do.” We got her lots of expensive, high quality dolls that look like her and other racially diverse dolls. We organized as many POC friends as possible. We went to culture camps. We paid a tutor to teach us all Romani language.

It has been a massive effort and it helped a little in the early years. In preschool, there were times when she would joyfully tell the others she is Roma, which is one way most of her classmates’ parents found out. But now she has absorbed the “norm” and is focused on what is “popular” in all things.

Being blonde is apparently popular. Being beautifully golden brown with voluptuous dark brown curls and mesmerizing blue eyes with long dark lashes is not. Or so she thinks.

“But why are they shooting so many people?” my son breaks in. He is almost entirely silent on these issues, so I allow his question to turn the conversation.

I explain that some police officers are good and very careful not to hurt anyone but some are not. Some police officers are afraid, but also some like the power of being able to control people and being the one with a gun. I explain that some white police officers think black people are bad or mostly all criminals and so lots of times they shoot immediately when they see a black person, just in case it might be a bad guy. And lots of times it isn’t and some nice person gets killed.

“Will the police try to shoot me when we go to America?” my daughter asks. My son, the one most likely to be in real danger, does not ask. I am not sure what I would say right now, if he did ask point blank. Someday we’ll have to really go into detail on this, but he’s so fragile right now.

“We are going to grandma’s house and that isn’t in the city. It isn’t dangerous there. And even in the city, most police officers are good…” My throat is closing up.

How do black, Hispanic or even Romani mothers do this? Damn it.

“The police won’t shoot you. You don’t have to be afraid of them. If you are lost, you can ask them for help.” What mother doesn’t need to tell her children that? I have told them that before and it still applies. “Most police officers are good and will protect you. But it is important to do what they tell you. If they tell you to stop when you’re walking, you have to stop right away.”

“What if they are telling someone else to stop, not me?” my daughter asks.

I understand what she means. What if she isn’t entirely sure? What if she thought they were talking to someone else? This is what fear does.

“You had better stop, if they say stop, even if you don’t think they are talking to you. You had better be polite and not touch them. You have to tell the truth and use polite words,” I continue, searching for the way through this morass. “If they tell you to go away from some place, where they are trying to get bad guys, then you have to do it quickly and politely.”

I know, of course, that isn’t enough. But I’ve seen enough videos of ultra-polite black kids dealing with police, that I know their mamas must have taught them this part. You have to be polite and positive about the police, but also careful and obedient. I don’t live in a place with other people of color, mentors for my kids. I don’t have anyone to tell me what else to say or what to teach my kids.

“I’ll bet if we were black you wouldn’t let us go to America,” my daughter adds before I can finish.

“Not exactly,” I tell her. “I would be very careful though. I would make sure you didn’t play with toy guns, if we were in a city.”

“Can I have a nerf gun in America?” my son speaks up again, timidly but clearly focused on his own priorities.

Once I might have said a nerf gun is so clearly not a weapon that there couldn’t possibly be a problem. But as he gets older and his face looks more and more like a young man—a young man with darker skin than my daughter’s, dark eyes and dimpled cheeks that tan to a deep brown in summer—fear rises up in me, the kind of fear that wasn’t made for white mothers.

“In the city, no, you can’t have any kind of toy gun,” I tell them. “But at grandma’s house you can have nerf guns.”

Grandma’s house is five miles from the nearest tiny town of 250 people in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. The kids’ uncles think I restrict toy guns because I’m a peacenik and that might have actually been true when they were toddlers and I just couldn’t bear the sight of two- and three-year-olds pretending at carnage. But today, I’m a lot more cynical as a parent. My idealistic, peacenik side has been pretty well pulverized, but then there is this part. I may have to have words with the uncles, who mean well but might not think their gifts to my kids through.

“What about in La Grande,” my daughter is quick to bargain with me. La Grande is the nearby metropolis of 12,000. And it is full of little boys with toy guns and slightly bigger boys with real guns, but all of them white and at risk mainly of accidentally shooting themselves or their friends, parents and siblings. It is the kind of place that is supposed to be ultra safe. I wandered all over it as a kid and the police, such as they are,, are pretty friendly.

But today… I do wonder. It is also as white as a new journal book on January 1 and there are all those guns in the hands of people who aren’t police, people who have been steeped in this culture and who have been watching the same news I have.

“We’ll see,” I tell the kids. “Maybe nerf guns, maybe. But nothing that looks anything like a real gun.”

This is all happily theoretical to us for right at the moment. Thanks to COVID-19 our summer trip to the US may well be postponed. The Czech Republic, where we live now, has its own race problems but not very many guns and very strictly reigned in police forces.

Just last weekend, we went to see the Romani cultural museum. It is a three-hour drive from home, so it isn’t a trip we can do often. It also isn’t particularly child-friendly. The vast majority of the exhibits are not interactive. But it does represent one of the best collections of Romani cultural pride and identity anywhere in the world.

We had a lovely guide—an older Rom, who took us under his wing and delivered his memorized speech interspersed with interesting personal asides. At one point, he murmured discretely to me, “Those children are Roma, aren’t they?” I confirmed it. If his Rom-dar is that good, he deserves the truth.

The kids stopped by one of the few interactive displays, a tablet which would read out the Romani words for the numbers along with the Hindi words, to show how Romanes and Hindi are related. The kids were mildly interested, and the guide asked, eagerly, “You know Romani language?”

The kids looked sideways at him and squirmed away, refusing to answer.

My daughter had protested coming to the museum at all. My son had been silent, uncertain what to think. Then on the way there, walking through a part of town with more Roma than usual, they asked an adult friend with us why there are so many Roma in one place. Before I could say anything, the friend answered, “Because the Roma were so noisy at night that all the white people left.”

I told myself to just ignore it. This was not the time to start a fight. But the images from the US news flooded into my brain. The buzzing noise and flashing lights in my peripheral vision rose up so fast that I didn’t know what was happening, until I whirled around and demanded, “That’s a lie and you know it! Do not lie to children! Tell them the truth!”

This adult friend’s children were present as well. I didn’t want him spreading twisted stereotypes in front of my kids or his own kids..

Of course, it didn’t help. Maybe I should have tried to explain the nuances. There were lots of other reasons for ghettoization. And if any of it was because of cultural differences, it was just a cultural difference. In actual fact, white households here generate at least as many decibels, if not more, because of the almost ubiquitous keeping of very loud and poorly behaved dogs among the white population. But the stereotype remains.

A stereo played inside one apartment we passed and Romani kids sat on the steps. The music was muffled and gentle but audible on the street, a grievous sin to the local white culture. As we passed, a Romani girl in another doorway read out a phone number off of her phone’s screen to someone leaning out of a nearby window.

My kids and the white and Asian kids with us stared. This too is not “normal” in the socially repressed local white culture.

I could have tried to explain, but the kids would not have heard any of it. Their attention spans are lightening quick and the fact that they were paying attention to such a topic at all when my adult friend spoke was rare and certain to be brief.

The same goes for my daughter’s question about the news from America. It was a fleeting opportunity to address the complex issues or to try to support their faltering self-respect.

My son has gone silent on the topic of Romani background since he was bullied several times with racist epithets last year. I tell him how beautiful and amazing and strong Roma people are, how courageous and steadfast they had to be to survive everything they came through. He doesn’t answer. He says nothing, just turns away and presses his back into the pocket between my body and my arm for comfort.

Adults can’t make sense of the events of these past weeks. How in the world can we expect children to?

My heart is broken. I am angry and afraid. I would be afraid of rioters if I was there and yet I don’t blame them. Quiet protest is ignored or silenced. The killing must stop and if you and your family are next in line, you’ll grasp at whatever you can—even if it makes no sense, even if it might make things worse. I don’t blame them.

It has gone so far beyond “too far.” Negligently racist killing is intolerable. Denial of racism is intolerable. Fraudulent justice is intolerable.

I can’t breathe. I really can’t get a deep, full breath of clean air. And I’m not even in the line of fire.

What I learned in quarantine

Our family therapist suggested, somewhat plaintively, that most people appear to have learned something constructive from COVID-19 lockdown. She left unsaid-—but obvious enough—that our family seems not to be among those gaining positively from it.

I’ll give her credit for tackling our case. I wouldn’t want to be our family therapist either. My husband and I aren’t perfect or perfectly coordinated, but we’re skilled parents. We talk through issues. We’re patient and loving. We know how to handle emotions and how to be consistent with the kids. But we’ve been hit with one thing after another and there simply are no easy psychological fixes.

Image by Arie Farnam

Since that session, I have noticed a rash of saccharine blog posts on what people are learning from the crisis—from “community is what really matters” to “self-care is what really matters” conclusions and everything in between.

I do think I learned a lot during the two and a half months in isolation with my kids. I never stop learning in this life. But it is true that a lot of the things I’ve learned aren’t very positive or therapeutic.

Here are the top dozen things I learned:

12. I learned, as so many people in major crises throughout history reportedly learned, that times of fear and hardship bring out the worst in a lot of people and the best in a few.

11. I’ve learned that my pantry, when well stocked, can support my family for at least a month, despite requiring some creative cooking after a couple of weeks. (Learning this gives me both a small sense of security and a more concrete sense of what long-term disaster might be like.)

10. I learned that you can make sourdough from one package of yeast and then use it for months to leaven bread. (This is moderately useful in general.)

9. I became an expert in parental controls on both Android and IOS systems. (I wish this wasn’t a basic survival skill in our world but now it is.)

8. I learned how to kid-proof most of my house and lock myself in my bedroom, when that is all that can be done and when to come out again. (My husband learned how to install several locks around the house.)

7. I learned to prioritize, utilize micro-moments and how to clean and cook faster than I ever thought possible. (This is not fun but it does represent stretching of personal capacities.)

6. I learned to gauge the lung and vocal-cord capacity of my kids and schedule scream-time into schoolwork sessions. (This should not be confused with having learned “patience.”).

5. I learned just how little Netflix Europe has for kids. (I could really do without this knowledge.)

4. I learned which tiny chores my kids can be motivated by video game rewards to do and which actually entail a savings of time over simply doing them myself.

3. I learned to do a full shower and bathroom routine in less than four minutes.

2. I learned overwhelming gratitude for an hour or two of alone time and learned that the pre-COVID routine that used to seem hard was actually incredibly easy.

1. The number one thing I learned during COVID-10 lockdown is what living in the present moment actually means and sometimes I can even pull it off.

The situations people are living in during COVID-19 vary widely. Some people are learning to cope with solitude. Others are learning to cope with overcrowding. Some are learning to cope with a ton of free time. Others are working frantically just to keep up with basic needs. That’s why making assumptions about what someone else should be gaining or learning won’t be very effective.

Things have been hard—really hard—in so many ways. I try to take a deep breath. It isn’t easy. My chest is tight today but eventually it comes.

I glance up from the keyboard and out at the fading evening sky above the greenhouse. The trees on the ridge above us are in full leaf now and the clouds glow pink and cobalt behind them. I take a deep breath.

This moment is okay. The children are in bed. The sky and the trees give me the gifts of their beauty. The garden plants in the greenhouse are well.

I used to be confused by instructions to “live in the moment,” because it seemed like the naive advice of people who don’t need to plan for how they are going to eat in a month or a year or the advice of people who are fortunate enough not to need to process painful past events on a regular basis.

“Don’t focus on the future. Don’t focus on the past. Focus on the now.”

But I have learned this much from COVID-19 lockdown. It isn’t that you don’t think of the future or learn from past mistakes. It is that emotionally you react only to the moment. We cannot plan much now. And if we think too much about the future, we are likely to start crying. Thinking over the past day is rarely any better.

Yet this moment is OK.

If you focus on future plans or mull over the past, be it bright or dark, you will inevitably miss the present moment. And even in the bad moments, it is better to focus on that one moment and deal with it, rather than adding up in my mind all the days it has been happening and anticipating all the days, months and years this will continue.

The question is always, “Can I survive this moment?” And if the answer is “yes,” then it becomes, “What should I do in this moment?”

And if the answer is “no,” then it is okay to cry out in that moment of despair, but then it passes and I realize that the answer was actually “yes.” I did survive.

This I think is the same for all of us, whether what we are surviving is isolation and a crisis of inner mental health or chaotic and unhealthy circumstances. “Can I survive this moment?” is the question.

I used to be all in my head. My primary entertainments and tasks were intellectual, reading, listening to audio books or podcasts while I worked, writing, research, teaching, preparing to teach, studying medicinal herbs and so forth.

I was bored with random chatter. The first days of COVID-19 lockdown were an agony of boredom amid frantic work for me. I had to rush from one task to another and still never catch up, yet my mind screamed for stimulation.

I learned to stretch my interest. Now my mind finds stimulation in the mingled aroma of the soup or in the grain of the wood in the cutting board or in the understanding of the child raging in front of me, the face and the posture, the exact type of cry.

I pay attention more. I am less in my head and with that I am less self-absorbed. I am less concerned by what my small ego wants and more focused on what is needed in the moment. Somehow, with that has come a greater focus on the joy found in rare moments.

Learning reciprocity the hard way

With Mother’s Day just past, it’s still on my mind. There was a time when I thought Mother’s Day was nothing but a saccharine, commercial holiday. I was unimpressed even with the cards teachers force kids to write to their mothers. And then, there were the years when I was battling infertility and Mother’s Day was like a knife twisting in my gut.

I have a new perspective now.

First of all, I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific, Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It has taken its place among the select handful of books that are my all-time favorites. It’s that good.

Image via Pixabay

The primary theme is reciprocity with the natural world. One of the big questions explored in the book is whether or not gratitude, including overt expression of thanks, is “enough.” Does our gratitude somehow repay the natural world for all that we take and for the great harm human beings are doing to the earth’s ecosystems?

The answer is complex. There are some ways in which Kimmerer argues that gratitude is a particular gift that humans have to offer and that all that is asked of us is that we give the gifts that come naturally. But then there are ways in which it is clear that most humans have lost touch with the cycles of reciprocity and this is a grievous loss.

That was kind of the theme of Mother’s Day this year for me.

For us it was COVID-19 lockdown day 61. Being trapped in quarantine for two months with any three other people will tend to highlight their shortcomings for you and strain whatever relationship you have. In our case, we are nearly at the point of psychological collapse.

That has a lot to do with various disabilities. I’m nearly blind and the other three people in my household are dyslectic, which entails not just problems learning to read but also lifelong struggles with organization and attention to detail. Anyone who lives with a blind person will know that organization and attention to detail are the keys to success. On top of that, one of the kids has significant behavioral and psychiatric problems.

I’m the mother in this zoo of needs, the one responsible for filling bellies, soothing hurts and ultimately imparting values. I have spent the past eleven years doing everything I can to raise children with the values of respect and reciprocity. And by any measure, at this COVID-19 moment, I have failed miserably at that, whether it is entirely my fault or not.

This past Mother’s Day, my kids, ages 9 and 11, were at the end of a three-day weekend, because May 8 is a state holiday here. They had been out riding bikes both of the previous days in the sunshine and had no responsibilities. On Sunday, they needed to catch up a few things for school and do a small chore each to help out around the house.

Several hours of screaming, cussing, hitting and throwing everything within reach ensued.

“You’re the worst parents ever!” “I wish I had a different mom!” “I wish you would die!” “I hate you!” “Every other kid in the world has an iPhone, except me!” “No one else has to do chores!” “You are supposed to be my servant!” The screeches bounced off the walls (but they are edited here to exclude vulgarity. simply because I don’t feel like repeating those parts)

In the end, I didn’t get any vaguely cubist pictures featuring hearts this year. I didn’t even get any hugs and my kids never did do kisses. I haven’t ever actually experienced breakfast in bed and it certainly wasn’t on the menu this year. I didn’t get flowers and instead my eleven-year-old pulled up the flower starts I had put in window boxes, taunting me through the kitchen window while she tore the tender roots to shreds because I wouldn’t let her have video games before her homework was done.

So, it wasn’t much like the way Mother’s Day is portrayed in popular culture.

I did overhear the phone tutor trying to get my children to draw me a picture for Mother’s Day. They didn’t. My husband is too overwhelmed to make them do it or to think about values beyond survival.

The whole thing made me think about reciprocity, the value of gratitude and the role of ever-giving, sacrificial mother. This is essentially how we treat the earth, isn’t it?

When I spend hours cooking from scratch only to have my family make gagging noises at the table and complain that other kids get packaged food, I think of the earth giving us endless crops, despite our abuse of the soil through chemical fertilizers and harmful monocultures. When I have to shield my particularly vulnerable eyes with my arm, while the kids throw pencils and toy cars at my face, I think of the rare-earth mining operations that gouge deep into the planet to make my phone and computer.

My children have a lot of needs and even more desires. Perhaps like the earth, I signed up to be a mother, but I couldn’t possibly have known what the cost would be. It isn’t so much the work, the gray hairs, the long nights, the exhaustion or the endless homework sessions that get me down.

It’s the words and the disrespect that hurt. I wonder if the earth feels the same way.

Of course, there are scientific reasons why the earth is hurting and none of them have directly to do with our expressions of appreciation, or lack their of. But Kimmerer makes a compelling argument as to why gratitude physically and biologically, as well as spiritually, matters to plants and ecosystems.

We know it matters in relationships. Despite my very unpleasant experiences of Mother’s Day, I’m actually a proponent of it. I know it is used and abused for commercial purposes far too often. But there is nothing like NOT getting a smudged picture of a stick figure mother and child to make you value one.

I am glad mothers are given at least one day of gratitude and appreciation. It may be too much like Earth Day, when some of us do the same for the earth without giving much thought the rest of the year. But either is a call for us to rejoin the circle of reciprocity. And this year, even more than most, I have learned how the earth must feel as an unacknowledged mother and my resolve to do right by her is renewed.

Would gratitude and appreciation be “enough?” If I did get Mother’s Day cards and “thank you” when I cook a meal?

Would it erase every other trouble? I doubt it.

But I think it might just be “enough” in a way. I have a lot to give as a mother. My well is deep. Just not bottomless.

The earth is like that too. She’s a mother with vast resources, just not endless resources. If we treated the earth the way we say people should treat their human mothers, with some basic appreciation and gratitude, as Kimmerer asks, there might just be hope for us after all.

Can we make sacrifices when scientists say it's necessary?

In the Czech Republic we have lived with school quarantine and national lockdown for six weeks now.

The entire service industry—beyond grocery stores, gas stations and pharmacies—is shut down. Major factories have closed. All of the borders are closed. Road and air traffic has been cut to a minimum. People rarely leave their homes. Everything happens online.

Children study at home. Adults work online. The only activity you are allowed to do outdoors is go to a natural area to walk or bike alone. People who still have jobs and open businesses are allowed to go to work and one family member at a time can go shopping for food.

Image by Arie Farnam

That’s it. That is the new normal.

Everyone who leaves home must wear a face mask. Only if you are in your vehicle alone are you allowed to be without a facemask. If you are in your vehicle with your child, who shares your household and air every day, and you are not wearing facemasks, you are very likely to be stopped and fined.

It has been six weeks and while the economic strain may force some changes in May, there is no real end in sight. In some places Covid-19 lockdown may not be entirely enforced. But here it is strict and it isn’t just the authorities enforcing it. Social pressure is intense if any individual is seen outdoors without a mask.

My husband who rides his bike on the “communing with nature” exemption is often yelled at for not wearing a mask while speeding down a scarcely used rural road at 40 mph without a mask. Doctors say wearing a facemask during physical exertion is unsafe and can lead to heart attacks and that the distances involved make such exercise safe without a mask, but the media spin is all about Coronavirus with none left over for details.

The media reaction around Coronavirus has been off the charts. Fear has spread like wildfire. People I never would have believed would go in for such fear or be willing to change their way of life so drastically for anything have fallen into line like so many ants.

On the one hand, I hear criticisms over the phone from my few advanced students who work in medical fields. They say that, yes, COVID-19 is a bit worse than the flu and, yes, we should be concerned, but they worry that the fear reaction has been blown out of proportion and they wish people were more careful about other diseases that have caused and continue to cause preventable deaths.

I am watching the social situation with a certain amount of analytical interest. I would not have believed such massive economic and social restrictions would be accepted so enthusiastically by the public for anything short of an air raid or a nuclear attack. But the restrictions have been followed willingly and peer-enforced by the vast majority of the population.

Much of it appears to be motivated more by fear than by an altruistic desire to protect that portion of the population which is truly at risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19. But still even the idea that fear could motivate people to sacrifice in this way is novel and surprising.

I’ve spent much of the past ten years trying to raise concern about climate change and implementing what measures I could in my own life. It’s very hard to do something like that on your own. Anyone who is concerned about COVID-19 and trying to do voluntary social distancing in an area where authorities are not imposing it will now understand what I felt for years over climate change.

Frankly, the “sacrifices” we are making regarding COVID-19 aren’t that bad. The worst is probably that I may not see my family in Oregon this summer, and depending on what this does to the airline industry and the wider economy, it may be a long, long time, if I do see them in person ever again.

That hurts. No doubt about it. The thought of never being able to go home again hurts a lot. But I’ve always known that if real steps were ever taken to combat climate change, long-distance air travel would be one of the first things to go. I’ve been ready to give that up. It just didn’t make any sense to sacrifice my own family for a symbolic savings that would not in reality change anything for those dying due to the catastrophic effects of climate change.

The other sacrifices we are making because of COVID-19—staying home all the time, living in close quarters with family, being isolated from friends, foregoing social engagements and entertainment, taking economic and financial hits—these are not fun, but they are easily survivable. The hardest thing is dealing with insanely demanding and insensitive teachers, who insist my kids must do long lists of make-work exercises in order to keep them “occupied,” but refuse to teach online or provide interaction with kids.

All the actual teaching, explanations, motivating and corralling distracted kids must be done by parents, if teachers refuse to interact. With kids with special needs, that is easily a full-time job for me—a job I’m not paid for that prevents me from doing the work I might get paid for.

The combination of complex technological struggles and kids with learning and behavioral disabilities makes it one of the least pleasant times I have ever lived through. It is definitely less pleasant than the five months I spent on short rations in Siberia amid extreme economic crisis when I was nineteen, and that is saying something. But it is primarily the actions of insensitive and oblivious humans that make it that way, not the actual conditions of quarantine.

Other than the school issues, quarantine is easy if you live in a place where it is handed down from above. Work schedules have been accommodated to it. Food deliveries are sporadic but they keep coming. Official support for the measures and the fact that everyone else is doing it makes it easy.

My kids used to complain bitterly about the restrictions on our lives caused by combatting climate change. They could see that few of their friends take the train on a regular errands or walk and bike to school. They could see that their friends eat differently, don’t have to recycle and have a lot more plastic stuff at home. Even my husband resented our climate-related “Victory Garden.”

But the kids are fine with COVID-19 restrictions. It’s exciting and they feel like they are part of a community effort when they put on masks. They ask almost every day, if their friends can visit, but it is the other kids’ parents saying “no,” more than me. I’m not the one putting on the brakes and asking them to make sacrifices this time. They can see the facemasks on everyone’s faces when they watch people out on the road and even live in TV studios. They are happy about being home from school, though unhappy about the extra load of schoolwork. Most importantly, they don’t see it as my doing.

It’s easy when you don’t have to fight your family over it.

Many friends have started to refer to Victory Gardens online because of COVID-19. People who used to dismiss my calls for gardening and self-limiting to combat climate change are now ordering seeds and shovels.

The end result is actually much better for the climate and the people struggling to survive in flood and drought zones than anything activists achieved before. Long-haul air transport is now rare. The roads are empty. Everyone shops online for food and does without new plastic stuff because only grocery stores are open.

It’s easy when you don’t have to explain endlessly to dismissive and jocular friends why you choose limits.

I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised, even relieved to see that our society is capable of this. If we can do this over COVID-19, surely we can do it for the much greater, already very deadly and equally scientifically certain crisis of climate change.

The missing elements, of course, are the media frenzy and the official support for limits.

I used to have difficulty even imagining a scenario in which people in our society would actually act on climate change. Now it isn’t so hard to imagine. All I have to do is replace the word “Coronavirus” in the news cycle with “climate change,” and the scenario is all too realistic The intense media focus on the virus has infected every corner of the blogosphere, including avidly trend-bucking ol’ me.

If this amount of media attention was paid to climate change, I guarantee we would see significant remediation. Even if authorities didn’t act of their own accord, popular pressure would soon force them to. The onus now seems to really be on those who wield pens and cameras. It is our move in the struggle to save the world.

The media focus made Coronavirus the defining issue of 2020. Media focus can do the same on climate change. There are no more excuses. It’s a choice.

Isolation is hard, but I already knew that

The past month of national coronavirus lockdown has been hard on my family.

We have a kid with serious behavioral, psychiatric and learning disabilities and another kid with dyslexia. We are coping with the excessive demands of insensitive and disengaged teachers. We’ve been learning to cook from scratch faster than ever before. There have been a few weeks in there where supplies were hard to come by and we had to get creative with our prepper techniques.

But I hear a very different kind of suffering echoing across the internet. Other people are suffering from social isolation, a loss of control in their lives and a complete disruption of their routines. Anxiety levels are skyrocketing and clinical emotional problems are exacerbated.

For awhile I was a bit mystified, at times even dismissive. How can all these people be so wimpy? Most of them don’t have kids with complex challenges and no one is emailing them with threats of failing grades for an assignment that was thirty minutes late due to internet problems. They’re just stuck at home, alone, resting!

I always did have sympathy for the people stuck with kids in small city apartments, but oddly those aren’t the complaints you hear most about. By and large, the loudest wails of distress are coming from the privileged suburbs. Those who I expected to be most vulnerable seem to be stoically silent.

At first, I wondered if this was because they didn’t have access to the internet. I contacted a friend who is a single mother in the inner city and asked in depth about their well-being. She assured me that they were coping well. She can still go to work and her ten-year-old has been semi-parenting and supervising homework for the eight-year-old and the seven-year-old for years already. Homeschooling them and herself isn’t that much more. They’re used to hard times.

I shook my head in wonder and went back to my own struggle, feeling decidedly inferior to the ten-year-old in the inner city.

But as the weeks have passed and I have observed the struggles of others (and read a certain amount of psychological analysis), I realized something significant.

That social distancing that is causing so much havoc for so many people… I know it well. I’ve lived it for years as a socially excluded person with a disability. The amount that I leave my house has only decreased slightly, despite the fact that we’re on national COVID-19 lockdown with only essential supply runs allowed.

Photo by Arie Farnam

My social contact has only been reduced a little, since there was very little of it to begin with. The only change in my daily routine is that my kids are home and I can’t do my work because they are so overwhelmingly needy and their teachers are insanely demanding.

That loss of control in people’s lives… I have always lived in a world where I had very little power in the outside world and I was forced to make harsh choices to build a life I love in the small area I can influence.

For years the decisions of others to exclude or include, to harm or to take have hit me like successive waves that I was powerless to deflect. My only power was always in how I took the waves and what I did with driftwood that washed up.

And that disruption of routine and the resulting rudderless confusion… I remember when I was in my twenties and I first left the shelter of structured education. It was terrifying for a few years. I spent almost every day alone. My work was independent and no one was giving me daily feedback. I had to create my own structure, my own schedule and routine. If I got any reward or consequence for my work or lack there of, it was in terms of months, rather than minute by minute or day to day.

And it was hard. I recall the months I spent struggling against depression, sitting among the boxes in a little room I rented at the time in a city where I had few friends and no family.

I knew that my life was in my own hands, that I had to get up and do the work despite the isolation, that no one else would do it for me and no one would help me. It was paralyzing and demotivating and such a heavy load.

As I start to realize these things, my empathy grows in bounds for the people experiencing this for the first time. Suddenly, the people who were out in the free world, who had a social life and regular jobs and culture and community have been thrown into a life that is much more like mine.

I remember the six years I spent almost entirely alone—often on two-week bouts of lockdown and enforced rest—while I struggled with intractable and medically unexplained infertility. I remember the many resolutions I made to study something, to use my open-ended time wisely, to be calm and to practice good grooming habits. Day after day, month after month, I started new schedules and forced myself into healthier routines.

Then as an inexperienced, new mother of traumatized children adopted from Eastern European orphanages, with no women friends to advise me, I spent the baby days battling the demons of despair, guilt, shame, depression and extreme loneliness. Without the ability to drive, it was nearly impossible to get to mommy-and-me classes for toddlers and when I made the mile-long trek into town, other mothers told me that my inability to make eye contact due to my disability made me unacceptable for their group.

So, I made my own music circle with my two kids. I put up colorful posters on the walls. I had an art project scheduled for every day. I tried to teach my preschoolers to cook. I started early reading programs with them and learned to garden.

But it took years! I’m not bragging. I’m aching for all the people facing isolation just now for the first time. If it feels really really hard. That’s because it is.

I’ve been there. And I didn’t overcome it in a few days or a few weeks. I did overcome it, but it took years.

In the end, I did learn a lot of great skills. I can now make my own schedule and I get up happily before dawn, meditate and go out to tend to my garden and animals all before the kids get up. But I didn’t start out that way. I was a wreck, a mess, like a lot of people report being a mess now.

It might help to listen to those people you know who have traditionally been somewhat isolated. Ask them how they stay sane and healthy. If you’re struggling with this, consider that while whole societies being at home in lockdown is unprecedented, you aren’t really the first people to experience it. And those of us who have known isolation and didn’t succumb to extreme depression, addiction or unhealthy living have skills that you can learn.

I have read several self-care articles out there on the web that try to teach these skills and I remember when such things sounded very unrealistic to me. They tell you to keep to a routine, to try to set a time to get up, to shower and get dressed as you used to when you had someplace to go. They tell you to eat regular meals and make sure they’re healthy. They tell you to limit your time staring at social media and scary news reports on TV. They tell you not to beat yourself up mentally when inevitably you fail at all of this.

So from experience,, are they right?

Yup, they’re right. Routine helps. A lot.

Regular bedtimes and waking times help. Personal hygiene isn’t just for the physical health concerns. It really helps the whole situation. It helps you feel purposeful and gives back some of that sense of control. Healthy eating and healthy sleeping both have major psychological effects. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid the unpleasant price for wasting half a day on social media.

But the thing I rarely find in these lists, the skill that I think I developed over time that has helped the most, is actually making a schedule for yourself with a purpose greater than daily survival in mind.

About ten years ago, I realized that my life was probably never going to change, that I was never going to be accepted and welcomed into the community and a wonderful group of friends. And somehow, against all the weight of years of depression and media programming that said friends are the sum total of a person’s worth, I decided to build a happy life anyway.

I started building it step by step, by deciding what I wanted in my life and scheduling it. I scheduled a daily spiritual practice and did it.

For the first few years, I didn’t manage to do it every day. Then there came a year that I did manage it every day, except once when I was really sick. For the next two years, it felt like an accomplishment. Then it became indispensable and something I would never voluntarily miss.

I’m close to that level on daily exercise, but not quite to the point where it is automatic. I have managed to get daily contact with nature, animals and gardening into my life. I’ve managed to make daily writing part of my life.

I now manage to keep a schedule for my kids schooling despite their vehement protests and natural disinclination. I manage to have regular and healthy meal times for the whole family. But it all started with scheduling a few things I wanted in my life, like spiritual practice and exercise.

If you’ve read this far, you are intrepid and I know you can do this. Focus on the essentials and on your core values.

Here is a method for developing a fulfilling life even when you’re in isolation:

1. Figure out a practical routine of waking, grooming, eating and sleeping that actually works for you in your given situation.

2. Set alarms and push yourself to stick to it.

3. When it falls apart, look at the routine and the clock and get back into it at that point. Don’t spend time and energy berating yourself for being lazy or lacking self-discipline. Like they say with meditation, just gently return to your focus.

4. Once those basics have been mastered, you will have somewhat more energy and less chaos around you. Use some of that mental space to think about your core values and what you really want in your life. If you have to work at the same time, consider your work to be one of the priorities.

5. Write down your daily routine with times when it works for you to fulfill it. How strict you are with those times depends on your personality and whether or not being relaxed about the times results in the routine being fulfilled or results in chaos. Learn from disasters and adjust the routine as necessary. There’s always another day to practice on.

6. Then choose one thing you really must reintegrate into your life. That could be the thing that provides income or it could be physical exercise. Both are essential. But choose just one for now, and write it into your time schedule. Try it for a few days.

7. Then choose the next most important thing and write that into the schedule.

8. As you add more priorities to your life, you’ll run into problems. Some things take longer than you think. You may start to experience real fatigue again and need to adjust your sleeping hours. Tackle each issue as it comes. There is nothing you can’t fix or at least improve.

9. When you have integrated the priorities you don’t want to live without, stop adding things to your schedule, at least for a while. Get the schedule down really well before adding optional extras. Then when you add something else, pay attention to the effect on your whole daily routine.

This is the basic method. Of course, it sounds easier than it is. If it was easy, everyone in quarantine would be fine. But I know from experience that it can be done. It can be done alone and it can be done with a spouse and kids. Each variation has its own challenges. The key is focusing on building a life that you enjoy, bit by bit.

A word about self-discipline: Yes, self-discipline helps. But society tends to view it as something you have or something you don’t have. Many people will fail at this routine again and again and think that means they lack self-discipline. The thing is that the discipline is the starting over every day. That’s the crux. Yes, there are people for whom sticking to the routine is easier and some for whom it is harder. Some of that is about tenacity but a lot of it is about whatever circumstances you find yourself in. The discipline part is failing and getting back at it again… and again… and again… and again.

A note about depression: Your propensity to sink into depression in isolation or due to failing at your routine is largely biochemical. You can’t entirely control whether you do or not. Healthy food, meditation, positive thinking techniques, contact with friends and (pleasant) family over the phone, exercise and sleep will all help ward off depression. Comparing yourself to other people with different biochemistry generally will not help.

A note about purpose: One of the greatest and least discussed antidotes to depression is purpose. You can’t feel purposeful very well unless you have mastered the basic routine, but once you have, it may help a great deal to choose something you want to accomplish during this quarantine time. It can be as simple as building some abs through a lot of exercise on your yoga mat in a small apartment, or it can be as grand as preparing applications for graduate school or writing that book you’ve always wanted to write.

If you are, like me, stuck in a situation where purpose is elusive because each day is still a massive struggle to get through even the basics, whether that is due to harsh physical conditions, crowded conditions or disabilities, you likely already know there aren’t a lot of simple answers. But keeping to a little bit of greater purpose still helps me.

Hang in there. Keep getting up, even when it feels hopeless and useless. The use is always in the fact that your life will be more enjoyable if you create your own routine and schedule, even if just vegging out may feel enjoyable in the short-term. You’ve probably done that enough by now to know it doesn’t actually pan out that way.

Stay in touch with those you love far away, stay awake inside yourself and build what you want your life to be like within the external conditions. These are the things I learned through isolation.