Yesterday, at 1pm, the Premier, Minister for Health and Provincial Health Officer shared some sobering news: rising counts of COVID-19 in BC, and particularly in our region (which has seen a worrying number of the Brazil variant which has been seen to be more transmissible and less amenable to the vaccine), have warranted a three week province-wide circuit breaker.

Whistler Blackcomb has been closed, by provincial health order, for 3 weeks.

All indoor dining has been closed. Patios and take-out can remain open. For 3 weeks.

Indoor adult group fitness classes are closed. For 3 weeks.

Indoor worship is off the table again. For 3 weeks.

Masks will be required for all students from grade 4.

We’ve been advised to work from home, wherever possible.

We’ve been called to cease all non-essential travel – travel only for work or medical appointments.

Gather with groups no greater than ten, the same people, taking into consideration who is already in your work or family cohort.

Socialize only outdoors.

So here we are. Feels a bit like playing Snakes and Ladders and you get so close to winning and then down down down you go, right back to the beginning. Feels like, you know, this time last year, that everything changed.

It’s funny, because actually this changes nothing in my life. Those are my personal circumstances, but this changes nothing, and I still felt like crying when I heard this. So for all you people working so hard to keep restaurants running and keep our beloved yoga studios viable and teaching ski lessons and all the things, my heart goes out to you. This is hard news.

After my eyes stopped being so blurry and my heart dropped back down from my throat into the chest cavity, I took a big breath. And asked myself the question I’ve been asking myself all year: how do I resource myself to navigate this next phase? Name the grief and frustration, don’t just sweep it under the carpet. Sit for long enough with what I have to be grateful for that I can shift from a mindset of what I’m missing to what I have. Drop out of my hamster brain and into my body and remember that what needs tending right now is the nervous system. It’s up in fight or flight… how do I drop back down, engage the parasympathetic system, and find a path through this? I have a little toolbox, that feels so inadequate, because it’s full of small and subtle things – meditation, journalling, visiting some trees in the woods, offering thanks each morning, thinking about my ancestors and the kinds of things they lived through and how much resilience is literally baked into my genetic code. I think about the way I cherish a phone call, a snippet of connection with a friend. I think about the tiny gestures that are capable of transforming my day – the book a colleague just randomly sent me, the bagels a friend randomly dropped off when she heard my partner was broken, the call to check-in…

It would be nice to have tools that felt a bit more muscular or super-power-like… but these are what I have and they’ve really been enough. May you find the little tricks and tools that help you to feel grounded and grateful in your body too.