Dear mom who is deciding to cancel everything….

Dear mom who is deciding to cancel everything in the face of this novel corona virus,

I feel the weight of your decision right now. My family has decided to practice social distancing. We are limiting leaving the home for any reason starting today. I sat with my husband as we went over the calendar and sent apology emails out, hoping and praying that they would understand.

A photography convention in North Carolina, Disney on Ice with a special meet and greet, a blogging convention, an Easter egg hunt, and school conferences were all cut. We cancelled everything. 

If you are on the fence, wondering what to do, I’m glad to share our thought process with you. 

Establish your ‘why’.

My grandmother is my why.  She is eighty…. (wait; she reads this blog and she will give me a stern talking to if I reveal her actual age.) Let’s just say she is in a higher risk category. 

I am hoping to visit her soon and it is my job to make sure I take every precaution to make sure she stays healthy. This made the decision to cancel everything much easier.

Maybe your ‘why’ is a neighbor who has cancer or the child you see each morning getting off the bus in a wheelchair. 

Stop worrying about missing out when you cancel everything.

I know. Some of us will sit back while others still do all the things. It’s okay. We will hang out soon enough. And guess what?! We will teach our kids some amazing lessons. 

• Thoughtfulness – Not everything is about me. Every action I take has an effect. My actions can have a bigger impact than ever before. 
• Empathy – My children have friends that are immuno-compromised. We attend church where there are many over 60. It is a great time to talk about understanding how others might be feeling right now.
• Togetherness – Goodness, this is hard. We are on day one of our voluntary social distancing, and we have already had our share of arguments in the house. This is when we as parents can lean in. We can have open and gentle talks about how to get along when we are bored, how to fight fairly, and how to work through an argument without slamming doors. How often are we afforded the time to actually teach these lessons all the way through without rushing to the next event?
• Perspective – The disappointment is very real when we miss events and trips that have been planned, but when we remember why we are doing it, we can help them learn to have perspective in all things. Tomorrow is a new day.

The 1918 Flu and a lesson in social distancing. 

• If you haven’t seen the chart comparing the response of St. Louis to Philadelphia in the 1918 flu, please take a minute to look this up. Because of St. Louis’s precautions, they did not experience the huge swing of illness that Philadelphia did. 
• As a thoughtful and responsible citizen, we must consider our medical professionals. We must do everything we can to avoid a dramatic influx of patients all at once.

You were made for this.

• Mama, you are so strong. You are an incredible, beautifully made woman who knows how to love and protect her family. If there is something inside your heart, whispering to cancel everything, listen to that whisper. It just takes a few of us to make a difference, to give other people confidence, to take the same steps, and to stop the dominoes from falling.
• We live in an amazing city! We can replace museums with hikes and playgrounds with picnics in the backyard. 

I read a quote the other day that went something like this:

If we all work together and cooperate with social distancing, we could wake up in a few weeks and everyone could say that we were overreacting and things could get back to ‘normal’. This would be the best thing that could happen, because that would mean we did it. We worked together to fight for someone else’s life, not just our own.