I have a friend who is an intuitive, and she spoke of the Earth changes to me about fifteen years ago.  I interpreted them as tumultuousness with climate change issues, and political goings-on.  I didn't read between the lines; I didn't anticipate a pandemic.

Yet many years ago (nearly 20, though that's hard to believe) when my partner and I moved to Asheville NC, we often said how it made sense to us to buy a little cabin on the river.  Secluded, quite easy to convert to be off the grid... with access to water and, with a generator, able to sustain us fairly easily.  We grew a garden, we created a little homestead in the modern sense.  Occasionally the subject came up that if times got really strange, people might drive up from Atlanta or south from the Mid-Atlantic, and proceed to over-run this little haven nestled between the mountains as they sought out safety... But we thought -even so- we'd stay fairly secluded, there on our pristine river down in the hollow, along an old wagon trail dirt road that few even knew existed.

But in 2019 we chose to pick up and move.  We headed to Vermont, one of my karmic centers from way back.  (I have family roots here that go back to the Revolutionary War... and back a full ten generations in New England as well as in eastern Canada.)  So I've always pined after the Northeast.  Finally, my partner agreed.

It's been a really big move.  Rural Vermont is a drastic change, even from our small cabin in the woods on the river in the wedge of the mountains of North Carolina.  I have extended family here, but no one very close... and my partner and I have two young daughters and a small business.  Unpacking, preparing for winter, keeping up with the necessities of parenting, and moving the business as well - it was all we had time for from the late summer of 2019 and through the colder months.  Just as we were planning to venture out to a local social group of larger scale, the announcement of quarantine was made, in March 2020.  Home-bound we were.

I feel like the circumstances surrounding the pandemic and the political goings-on in America right now are being experienced differently by every single person in this country.  Some of us struggle with paying our bills, or dealing with home-schooling our children, or figuring out new family dynamics generally, or feeling out of control, or wondering what is real and what is overdramatized, or worrying about the future, or trying not to gain weight...  Some of us have made the most of the situation and are finding innovative ways to make money, or utilize time at home for projects and hobbies and relaxation, or are cooking more than ever and experimenting with healthier choices...  Some of us are protesting.  Again and again and for many diverse reasons.  Some of us are fighting for our lives.  Some of us are dying.

It is a rich time to be a writer.  To be an observer.  To bear witness.  Yet each of us must realize, in such an unprecedented time, that we can not simply be a witness.  We must be much more than that:  participant, hero, cheerleader, orator, innovator, problem-solver, leader, adventurer, peacemaker, citizen.  There are so many tags to list I can't even pretend to capture them all here with my keyboard.

And it's a mind-game, isn't it??  What is real, whose experience is most valid...?  Daily life seems to continue on my social media feeds, and certainly here in my own house... yet out there -out there- the experiences people are creating for themselves are vastly different than my own.

For me personally, finding time to write gets pushed down the priority list.  Even with long days here at home, the chores add up, the toddler needs tending, the company needs to be kept afloat, sleep needs to be had because the weight of these times is so unfamiliar; so foggy, moments to meditate and offer peace to the world must be found... The necessities of being a member of a family and extended family community, along with being an informed citizen, take precedence.

This is like Life, magnified.  Because we each live such a diversified existence.  Yet when things are "normal", we can overlook that and go about our days forgetting such is truth.

Hmm...  Circles back to the spiritual reckonings, the knowing that we all manifest our own journey...  And if we are wise, the knowing that we each will be well served if we take responsibility for that journey and grab hold fiercely; command it gently; find our own path at the same time we know that it unveils itself before us, one cobblestone at a time.  The stepping stones are already there:  we created each one but a moment ago.

Sounds like my fables are calling...  And so, to my pen I must go.

Be well.