Being confined to my home by the temporary power of the Alberta Quarantine Act, doesn’t sound like it could be a lot of fun. This was actually my second time finding myself in legally mandated self-isolation because of a sore throat. The first time, I was confined to my room and had someone else caring for my three-year-old son. This time, I opted to isolate with my son. The public health nurse said that we would be considered a unit and he would have to isolate too. You would think that we would be climbing the walls, stir crazy, or watching 10 hours of videos a day, but the five days we spent confined to our home were actually quite sweet. I have missed being with my little guy since I felt the need to hire a caregiver in May. I know every parent goes through this difficult transition of handing their children to another caregiver at some point or another, and it is painful for everyone. I am finding this transition particularly difficult. I am really torn. I am on the razor’s edge between being able and disabled. In the space between these two identities, these two realities manifest themselves in my body and mind at different times during the day. Thus, we decided that the best thing would be to hire a full-time caregiver. She is wonderful, amazing, playful, and energetic and I have been feeling left out and unsure of what to do with myself in my new found freedom/redundancy. So anyways, the week together with my son was quite blissful. My son didn’t complain once about staying home and I got to see a lot of things that I am putting in the way of my own happiness and peace.
This is what I found out:
Joy is in the present moment.
I tend to distract myself with busyness that keeps me from experiencing the joy of the moment. It can be so simple to take advantage of everyday pleasures like watching squirrels, clouds, trees, grass. To a small child, everything is wonder. To be able to follow them there once in a while is a beautiful gift. I distract myself from experiencing that gift through my “not-good-enough projects”: like noticing all the things I could improve in the house, or re-designing the living room in my imagination. My mind just wants to judge something and then it could be missing out on something wonderful.
Creativity emerges from boredom.
With no where to go and no one to call, we had to dig down and find some creativity. I noticed it actually feels like sinking down. Like we would feel the discomfort of boredom and we had to just dig into it, hunker down and let the discomfort ride. That’s when we would find something cool like playing dinosaur boats or rolling down the front lawn. I am normally not skilled at play, but it emerged when I let go of my mind’s busyness and ambitions and let us both get through the discomfort of boredom.
I can change my emotional reactions.
With an almost-four-year-old, there are a lot of opportunities to watch my emotional reactions like when my son smashed the intricate train track configuration that I had set up for him, peed on the floor and screamed yuck to the breakfast I made him all before 8:30am. I, understandably I think, spiralled into a rage, but I don’t have to accept that as a given. Am I really going to be in a rage until my son turns ?? What age do they stop doing stuff like that? I could watch myself start to spin and then wind myself back out of it. Okay, it took half the day for me to regain my centre but I did it. This is a learned skill. I have been studying meditation for several years. At a recent Advanced Weeklong workshop with Dr. Joe Dispenza, he coached us to reflect on each meditation and decide how we were going to do it better the next time. He also teaches to do this in life. Reflect on your day and think about how you are going to do it better tomorrow. Don’t just hope that life doesn’t throw anything at you. Rehearse how you are going to be when things start flying. So, I dutifully wrote in my journal what happened and my reactions to it and decided I did not want to be an angry and controlling. I was able to notice my emotional reactions, then think about how I was going to do better the next time something happened. Five days with nothing to do is an excellent time to work on this. My son gave me lots of other opportunities to react emotionally. Instead of attachment, anger, frustration and rage, I was able to choose a different way of being: present, playful, accepting, non-critical, non-judgement and achieve that more often. I decided to ease up on criticism, nagging and controlling.
Changing my emotional reactions saves energy
I learned recently that these habitual emotional reactions are real energy drain that we may not be aware of. Constantly being triggered into anger, frustration, annoyance, etc literally drains our energy. Being able to get a handle on some of my big emotional reactions actually left me with more energy to use for other things. Not only that but our week went smoother. Dr. Joe Dispenza has a great intro meditation that is available on Apple Music called Morning and Evening Meditation if you want to try this for yourself.
When I commit myself, what I need emerges from within.
I knew I just had to get through this week and that I had to do it on my own, so I found what I needed to do it from within- playfulness, patience, awareness, and energy.
I hope not to have to quarantine again. My true wish is for this situation to come to a harmonious and beneficial outcome for all. That we can learn and grow and evolve into more love, peace and joy from going through this experience together. That we can take advantage of these challenges to refine our priorities of how we expend our time, energy, and attention on and open our hearts to the simple pleasures of life thereby creating more harmony in our communities and our planet.
MUCH LOVE AND PEACE.
Check out my other reflections. I write about living with chronic illness, healing, the beauty of slowing down, parenting and creative projects.
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I have been living with chronic illness and exploring the healing journey for over 20 years. I offer what I have learned from that journey to you in the form of aslowerkindoflife.com.
