Images above and below borrowed from the incredible ‘All Right?‘ crew
It’s OK if you got overwhelmed.
It’s OK if you turned off the news, craving instead the most basic, fuzzy, embarrassing, seemingly trashy entertainment instead.
It’s OK if you chose what you ate because it tasted good, rather than because of how it made you feel.
It’s OK if you didn’t get outside every day.
It’s OK if you didn’t journal yourself into a new way of thinking.
It’s OK if you got mad at your kids.
It’s OK if you killed the sourdough starter on your first attempt.
It’s OK if you ignored that book on your bedside table, the one you really needed to start reading.
It’s OK if you didn’t get around to repotting the dying tomato plants.
It’s OK if you didn’t use the lockdown to learn a language, start a podcast, research cryptocurrency, start a daily meditation practice or mend a relationship.
It’s OK if joy was a little hard to find in April, and it’s not doing a great job of showing itself in May, either.
It’s OK if you’re having trouble balancing the bouts of anxiety with a serious case of loneliness.
It’s OK if you can’t pinpoint the genesis of that dull. pulsing. anger. that. just. isn’t. going. away.
It’s OK if you don’t have the capacity for other people’s problems or other people’s celebrations.
It’s OK if you didn’t have the capacity for other people, full stop.
It’s OK if there was only so much you could handle, and you said so. Because that’s called a boundary, and you drew it in arguably the most boundary-less time in your life, which takes courage.
Lockdown was and will continue to be all kinds of shitty. It will continue to affect our mental health, our physical health, our relationships, our temper, our capacity and our decision making.
Try to be kind. Try not to let guilt or shame have a say. Try to remember:
It’s OK to need a break, because the lockdown was not a holiday for anyone.
It’s OK to be a little frightened because you don’t know what’s next.
It’s OK if you still don’t know how to pull your motivation level up from its record low of ‘through the floor’.
It’s OK to say no.
It’s OK to still feel overwhelmed.
Jemma Balmer 