A year since the first lockdown began, a milestone of what I’m calling the stolen year. 2020 will go down as a year to forget in many ways, but on reflection, there have also been some silver linings along the way, like my garden, spending more time with my husband, baking, and having fun again with my writing.
It has been a tough year, it is 12-months plus since I saw my mum in person, but I also know how lucky I am. To live where I live, to have an amazing husband, cute furballs in Falcon and Peggy, as well as being able to work from home and shut myself off from the virus. I’m grateful that I haven’t had a year filled with grief like many others, covid really has taken so much in a relatively short time.
To cope with the craziest and at times scariest year I’ve ever lived through, my journal and writing have become therapy for me. I have used my journal as a way to start the day, express my feelings, thoughts, anxieties, as well as joys, and end the day without worries that would have gone on to interrupt my sleep.
Reflecting on the stolen year – a year of covid
Somedays, the words flowed more than others. One day I wrote pages, others just a word or a sentence, but each day alongside my daily gratitudes I wrote what the stolen year had taken from me. My thinking was as soon as the thoughts were transcribed on paper they could no longer affect me. Sometimes it worked, other occasions took longer to get over, and some I am still really mad about.
To mark the stolen year, I decide to put those thoughts into some kind of poem. OK, it doesn’t rhyme, rather a personal word slam telling the story of my year. But as I’m trying to stay upbeat, I’m balancing the stolen year with my silver linings, the unexpected joys that came out of a terrible year.
Silver Lining – an advantage that comes from a difficult or unpleasant situation – or in this case that comes from the stolen year.
