4 weeks of Covid-19 Level 4 lockdown
4 weeks of being in Level 4 lockdown here in New Zealand … done! During this time the little nagging voice in my head says “you SHOULD be blogging. Documenting this time. Sharing your experiences.”
But you know what? Writing a blog post takes more time and free mental space than I have during lockdown. I barely manage to create space to write my weekly newsletter – #selfcaresunday, and share a few things on Facebook. So here we are … 4 weeks into lockdown and this is my first blog.
How have the last 4 weeks been? A bit of a rollercoaster I think. Some things have gone really well but some things have felt super hard too. I take the approach of taking each day as it comes, each hour as it comes.
Things I feel grateful for:
- Living on Waiheke Island – I love our community and I love being able to walk down to the beach for my sanity walks!
- That we are all well – although I did have a covid test done yesterday due to an ongoing sore throat.
- My husband has a job
- A cupboard full of games the kids have rediscovered – Yahtzee, Carcassonne and SkipBo are current favourites
- My kids like school so are quite happy to do some school work
Things I feel challenged by:
- Having zero mental space of my own
- Sibling squabbles that seems to start as soon as they get out of bed
- Nobody getting enough exercise or burning off enough emotional & physical energy
- Feeling constantly exhausted
How is home school going?
Pretty good.
My eldest is quite self sufficient with her school work and her school was already well set up with technology.
The younger girls tend to be engaged first thing in the morning for a couple of hours but then lost interest. To be honest I don’t push too hard about it – being happy means more to me right now than ‘doing it all’
All the girls are really missing school, being with friends and connecting with their teachers. Emotions are starting to bubble over. Although it will still be a number of weeks before they can return to school I think their spirits will lift next week when we can do simple things like play in the water at the beach, or drive 10 minutes up the road to go on a hike.
What next?
It is pretty hard to predict what comes next … what will be the next ‘normal’. One thing I have been trying to focus my energy on is letting go of a desire to return to ‘normal’ as we knew it a few months ago. A little like when you become a mother and you keep feeling like you want to ‘go back’ to your old self … except that you can’t …there is no going back. I feel it is the same in the world right now … there is no going back … we can only go forward into whatever the new normal will be.
Take care wherever you are.
