The other day I followed up with a client to see how they were doing after our session, and their words to me were like a message my mind and body desperately needed to hear: “It has been a long year.” I had been rushing from the barn to get ready for my shift at the restaurant, plowing through my day which had become my usual pace, and this message stopped me in my tracks. Standing in the hallway in my house, I felt the weight of her words.
It has been a long year.
For some it has been filled with slowness, going in, the walls of our homes taking on a life of their own. When I’m at the restaurant the conversation these days is often, “This is our first time out to eat in fourteen months.” These words wash over me with so much meaning, and because of the nature of the industry I don’t have time to properly process them. The contrast between how some people have endured this past year feels almost startling to me.
With the reminder from my client that it has been a long year, I all of a sudden felt a huge release, like all of what we’ve been holding together needed to be let go, softened. Yes it has been a long year. Long and exhausting regardless of how you shouldered it.
For me, I launched my business amid tons of unknown and changing gears, picked up two restaurant jobs to make ends meet which also meant learning a new landscape. I’d worked in restaurants most of my life, but now we serve with masks on. We created new systems to help feed the people who stayed home. We had to choose between money and being constantly exposed to the public, while also feeling grateful daily to have work to go to, customers to serve, and kind coworkers to share this experience with.
The phases were wild.
First, the reinvention of massive outdoor dining and carry out, a busy summer filled with fresh air and hope. As the weather turned and outdoor dining closed up, we had an insurgence of people coming inside to dine who didn’t believe the pandemic was real, didn’t believe in masks, and wanted to talk about it all the time. For me this was the beginning of feeling real fatigue, but without taking the time to pause and notice it. Working in a mask, weighing my risks daily, talking to strangers about a politicized virus.
Then winter brought its own new normal to the restaurant, and we hit our stride with a new swell of regulars and a pace we figured out how to manage. There was a sort of calm within the storm feeling, and though the money wasn’t fabulous, our doors stayed open and we made do. I personally balanced my days between the barn and the restaurant, staying grounded out with the horses, allowing my mental health reprieve and balance, grateful for every brave client who came out to heal in the cold and snow. In a strange way I had a cheerier winter than I have in years – doggedly determined to get outside and not let anything get me down. Pushing.
The month of March came, one year in, vaccines, loosened guidelines, increased capacity, eager families emerging after months of isolation. All of this crashed into a new phenomenon in Madison – No one was coming back to work. Restaurants that had been closed and now felt safe to reopen couldn’t find staff. It was, and in some ways still is, like a ghost town. An industry that is such a part of what we love about this town has changed so completely it’s almost unrecognizable. Businesses longing to be vibrant again struggling to staff shifts. Businesses who have been beautifully creative to keep their doors open fighting this new strange battle.
With the reminder that it has truly been a long year, it occurs to me that we owe ourselves a little grace and gentle love, a little slowness as we continue to process all of it because no matter how you’ve passed this year it has not been easy – in so many different ways from home to home. Home schooling, children not getting to see their friends, so much screen time, moms making wine jokes just to keep from completely losing it. Unemployment, financial concerns, losing jobs, finding jobs, some moving back in with family to get by. Sickness, fear of getting sick, and the very real experience of losing loved ones to the virus that defined the year.
It’s a lot to process. And I had been in push mode doing everything I could to stay afloat that I wasn’t processing any of it. I put on my hard exterior and kept going, and going and going until my body gave out and I was physically forced to slow down. I share this because I know in my bones this feeling isn’t unique to me. The majority of people have had to push really hard through many strange obstacles and unique phases, much out of our control – guidelines ever changing, businesses shifting swiftly within those, doing everything we could to stay open and keep people safe. If you’re like me maybe you hear the whispers that this isn’t sustainable. I didn’t listen to the whispers and was sent more of a shout, slammed into slowness against my say so.
It feels like it’s time to make a point to really reset and start to peek out of survival mode, to re-examine how we’re making our way through. A feeling of softness sweeping away the hard exterior of pushing. Time for a deeper sense of grace and gratitude for ourselves and others, for kindness to radiate out and out in a way it never has before, a long deep breath as we transition out of this long winter and step into yet another new landscape. Time to make sure the lessons of this experience aren’t lost, that we’re painting a world we really, really want to live in.
Look at your bartender or server next time you’re out, your grocery worker. There is a certain wildness in most people’s eyes from what this year has been like. Check out their hands, raw and pink from sanitizing everything constantly. It has been a wild ride, one we will look back on one day probably with laughter recalling the insanity, definitely raising a glass to having made our way through.
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