We are well into our second lockdown due to the Corona pandemic and today my eyes are resting on my breadbasket standing on the counter in my kitchen. You might say, what is so special about this, it’s just a breadbasket.
Yes, it is just a basket if it wasn’t for the content in it right now. Instead of the usual slices of bread or the warm bread buns on Sunday mornings, its content has been replaced by sealed packages of face masks.
They are here to stay, yet we are not fully committed to accept them as being part of our lives from now on, therefore the masks have not found a better storage place at home. Those masks and everything that is connected with it make us rethink our lives and how we used to live. I’m more aware than ever what really matters now in my life.
With the pandemic came the much-needed lockdown and with this, the silence that spreads like a blanket over my neighborhood. When I make my solitary walks in this neighborhood, I find changes in the behavior of peoples. Before Covid-19 time we would have passed strangers without a word. Now we search for contact and when our eyes lock, we smile, nod, say hello or even start short random conversations. We have found the ability to better connect
with strangers or our neighbors.
I’m often wondering what makes me cope so well with lockdown and why some people struggle so much with it. The answer is easy to find. It all lays in the past 37 years and the life I lived, on and off as an expat. Having moved 19 times and having to push the reset button on myself and my family when it comes to friends, family, neighborhoods, cultures, my own dreams and careers I have become immune to being isolated. I could compare myself with one of those sea turtles who from time to time come ashore.
After a few decades, I have since found the solution as to how to cope and thrive in isolation. It has sharpened my senses and empathy and therefore I connect easily with strangers who love to share their stories with me. One of the reasons I became a coach is that I recognized how often people struggle and don’t really have someone to turn to during a personal crisis. Now more than ever, and due to the lockdown, people struggle to find a different sense of purpose for themselves due to the loneliness heavily weighing down on them.
When I moved back to Belgium, I first took care of becoming a certified coach and when I succeeded with this, I moved on with setting up my personal coaching office. Unfortunately, while I was setting up this fresh start, the pandemic fell upon the world and I realized once more how invisible and isolated life can become. I have gone through all the different emotions during this set back of finding new clients. Frustration, doubt about the ability to succeed, procrastination and restlessness to name a few. But it has also taught me some beautiful lessons of patience, personal soul searching, thinking out of the box and daring to let go. My road to growth is very much connected to who or what I want to bring forward and having time to grow can be a god sent. For many these changes are not so easy to place and people all over find themselves lost in this new reality. Therefore it is so important to share and reach out as a means of survival until life returns back to normal in the near future.
The clock on my wall relentlessly continues ticking away the seconds into the silence of the house. But I know that every second passing by brings us all closer to a new freedom we will soon embrace. Our world is giving us a precious gift with this pandemic if we are willing to embrace the changes.
Be Your Change
Life coach – coach narcisme misbruik
©Bernadette Verhaeghe
