After November, I took to re-binging one of my favorite television shows, and we just got to the season when COVID hits. It was actually filmed during COVID, which makes the episodes somehow more poignant.
As I’m watching the season unfold, I’m remembering those days when we really didn’t know what was going to happen, when people were suffering at ridiculous rates, when there was seemingly no end — or hope — in sight.
I’m remembering how we hunkered down. How we embraced simple things like making bread and trying new recipes. How we found comfort in each other — even from six feet away. How we came together and sang from balconies.
I’m also remembering our feckless, reckless President — back then — so incompetent and uncaring at his job that it felt like we were on board a rudderless ship heading for the rocks.
It’s hard not to feel that way now, because here we are, back in a collective crisis, worried for our friends and family, worried for ourselves and our livelihoods. Furious about the lack of leadership, again, from that awful awful man and his minions.
In the episode I watched last night, a young doctor was sitting outside the hospital in despair. She’d lost patients, run out of supplies, had been working non-stop, and worried that she might soon simply lose her mind.
But her friend finds her, allows her space to talk, shows her compassion, gives her comfort. They lean into each other for a while, and the despair eases.
It made me realize that the suffering we’re experiencing now is very much like the suffering we just experienced in the pandemic. Like then, there is so much that doesn’t make sense, so much to be afraid of, so many unknowns.
And, like then, we will get through this. We’ll be kind with each other. We’ll allow space to talk and to cry and to rage. We’ll be a little more compassionate, a little more gentle with other — and with ourselves. We’ll help each other cope, and we’ll dance it out when we just can’t cope anymore. We’ll take care of each other and lean into each other.
We’ve got this.
(©2025, Jen Payne)
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