Pandemic Emotions
This wasn’t going to be the subject of my latest blog post. It was going to be a historical look at some of the best photographs taken through times of Pandemics and difficult times. Think ‘Migrant Mother’ by Dorothea Lange from the Depression era, or this photo, taken during the Spanish Flu that infected around 500 million people (25% of the world’s population at the time) and killed 20 -50 million in 1918/19:
An emergency hospital in Kansas during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Credit...National Museum of Health and Medicine from the New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/world/europe/coronavirus-aids-spanish-flu-ebola-epidemics.html
But it didn’t feel quite right….
It’s a very emotional time; and I think we’re all just trying to process how we feel, and get through day by day, or feed by feed as I used to say when I was a breastfeeding mother. Personally I’ve had a bit of a stumble this week, and at the first hurdle! The reality of having six people in the house at all times, four of whom are home schooling, hit home. Couple that with distance from family, restrictive movements, and of course the fact that this virus is pretty damn scary, and some strong emotions surfaced. We are used to so much freedom in our democratic societies, this is all a bit of a shock. I am extremely grateful to have everything I need to survive pretty comfortably, I know it’s a privilege to be able to work and school from home, and I’m feeling gratitude for all of the small things; but I also feel it’s really important that we express our emotions in a constructive way - we need to ‘feel the feels’ and not bottle them up inside.
Written by someone far more eloquent than myself, I completely resonated with the following words on the current climate, by actor, musician, writer Josh Radnor. They fell into my inbox as I was writing this so it felt serendipitous to share them here:
“I have noted in myself a kind of reflexive optimism (i.e. “This is going to be okay,” “We’ll get through this,”) of which I’m becoming suspicious. Do I just feel that way because I’ve been inoculated by my privilege? Surely this is going to be calamitous for many people – far beyond the sick and the dying – and I don’t want to turn a blind eye toward that suffering: the suddenly unemployed and homeless, the relapsing addict and those that love them, those trapped in abusive and unsafe homes, etc.”.
It feels like this moment is asking me to grow up, to stop relying on false-hope granting platitudes and accept that pain, suffering, and grief are part of the birthright of being a human being. I say that with the full knowledge and deep belief that love, joy, laughter, and art are also part of that birthright. Light and shadow are inextricably bound up with each other and it’s naïve to think that darkness can be vanquished or banished in favor of everlasting light. That’s magical thinking of a kind to which I refuse to subscribe”. For more of his insightful writing go to: https://mailchi.mp/11ca73b04ade/great-love-great-suffering?e=7dcd115d67
I decided that a look through some of my own photographs might be a good way to process what I’ve been feeling - surely I could find some ‘metaphorical’ images that represented the vast range of emotions that I’ve grappled with these past few weeks.
And I think I have……
This is not a post with tips on how to cope, but simply, a walk through some of my own images that, at the time I just felt inclined to take because they were interesting, but now mean a bit more to me when I put them into the context of this post. Perhaps you will resonate with some of them too. I know it’s certainly helped me process the enormity of what we are going through right now.
So here they are, all my feels:
CLAUSTROPHOBIC
Forget the brochure, this is a photo I took of the 4,500pax capacity cruise ship pool ! Suffice to say that the cruise wasn’t top of the list of my favourite holidays, and I’ll perhaps never go on one again after this…………. My house of 6 isn’t quite like this, but at times, it does feel like the walls are caving in on me.
BEWILDERED - DISBELIEVING - COMICAL - LIVES TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
Also representative of some leadership we’ve seen around the globe
CONFINED
CONTAINED
FRUSTRATED
CLEAN
ISOLATED - SMALL - DISTANT
CLOSED - BORDERED UP
RESTRICTED - RATIONED
SHATTERED
HAZY - FOGGY
UNCERTAIN
SCARED
Credit: Mario Tama, Getty Images
Gun and ammunition sales are through the roof in the US, some reports say tenfold. In some states, gun shops are considered an essential business, and the NRA are suing the State of California for gun store closures. “Municipalities who target lawful gun stores for closure aren’t promoting safety—by weaponizing their politics to disarm you and your loved ones, these shameless partisans are recklessly promoting a gun-control agenda that suffocates your self-defense rights when you need them most," Jason Ouimet, the executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. See https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490004-nra-sues-california-officials-for-closing-gun-stores-amid-coronavirus
and this article on how guns and church services are considered essential, in some States: .https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-03-30/how-guns-and-church-services-became-essential-business-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic
DARK
MESSY - SURREAL
EDUCATED
Never before have I looked at a curve on a graph so much
GRATEFUL
For family, friends, food, flowers, housing, the internet, books, music, spring air, community, travel, experiences… I could go on
THOUGHTFUL
The general sentiment here in ‘The South’
and HOPEFUL…
What will the future hold? We really have no idea. I’m hopeful of a lot of things…
I posted a photo of the right hand mural below to my photography Instagram account on February 18, with this description:
“I love the possibility of the message in this mural I saw in Paris. I think we all have an idea in our head of how our life will pan out, or at least an idea of how we’d ‘like’ it to work out. But it’s often out of our control. We never know what is around the corner and what spanner life will throw at us. It’s both exciting and scary to think about what the future may hold, which is why it’s so important to really hold onto the current moment and embrace it for what it is”.
It feels even more poignant now, particularly in this image which has the ‘shhh’ mural included - it’s as if there is a secret that no-one else knows about. Does anyone really know what is going on? Is there some great universal force at work? Who knows…
Only time will tell whether we use this point in history to make positive changes to our world.
And as many a wise wo/man have said, “where there’s life there’s hope”…..