Last night there was an ad on TV for St. Jude's Hospital for Children. Those ads are good at pulling hard on my heartstrings.
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“How can you believe in God in a place like this?” asked Dr. Santiago. He was referring to the deaths and grief that were particularly prevalent that month. I immediately replied, “How can you not believe in God?” referring to the hope and miracles and love that never died. It was 7:30 AM, time for morning rounds to start in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
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Why is it that time is so elusive when you’re raising kids and running a family? There is never enough time it seems, except maybe when your three-month-old starts crying in the middle of the night and you can’t get her back to sleep no matter what you try, from feeding to changing diapers to singing to her, and it seems to take forever before she finally closes her eyes. That is when time crawls. But for the most part, for those of us who have come out the other side of raising kids, those eighteen years fly by, way too fast.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has turned the world on its head in so many ways. I believe that, for a short time at least, dogs and kids were on top of the upside-down world. I picture dogs and kids sitting on top of a world globe laughing, playing, and enjoying life. Then at the bottom of this world globe are the adults – frazzled, freaked out, frantically scrambling, eyes wide open, mouths open in horror, hair all discolored and messy
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The current worldwide, major event of the Covid-19 pandemic, accompanied by a tanking economy, high unemployment, closures of schools, and the overall unease and uncertainty, has sent many if not all of us into a state of stress and anxiety to some degree. Many people’s mental health is on the brink of breaking. In Washington state, the number of phone calls and texts to the Disaster Distress Helpline, a mental health resource, has spiked incredibly. They have received more calls in the month of March alone than they did in all of 2018 and 2019 combined.
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It feels like the world has turned upside down, or at least been knocked off of its axis by a few degrees. Things are happening and developing and changing very fast. There is the immediate concern of one’s own health and the health of loved ones, especially elderly parents and relatives
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Recently I went on a three-day silent meditation retreat. No talking, no communicating in any way, no reading, no writing – that is all part of noble silence taught in Buddhism. I loved not talking – no chit chat, small talk over meals; no explaining myself, or talking about myself; no being bombarded with a lot of noise coming at me or the din of 100 voices talking at once – just silence.
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Sounds obvious, but for me, it recently rang especially true. I remember anticipating the day my youngest child would be graduating from high school and moving on to college. I believed that this would be my time of freedom, to live somewhere new, wherever I chose, and do whatever I wanted. Freedom from the confines and responsibilities of parenting was in my vision.
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As a pediatric nurse practitioner I’ve seen a lot in my 30+ years of practice. I’ve seen babies born, children get sick and get better, and I’ve seen children die - I’ve seen more of this than most people see in a lifetime, many lifetimes.
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The beauty of Chinese medicine is that it is all about getting to the root of any problem.
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