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See Part I of this post here: Love in the Time of Coronavirus
In my experience as a two-time cancer survivor I’ve learned that one of the best ways to deal with difficult circumstances is to transform your anxiety into action—to find a source of meaning and purpose during the struggle.
In the last week I’ve seen a really heartening trend, with people sharing ideas about how we can support our families, friends, and communities during this time of crisis. Here are a few ideas of specific actions you can take—it will help make the world a better place, but it will help you feel better, too:
- Tip your food delivery driver extra—they’re putting themselves at risk to feed us all
- Run errands for others who are elderly, immunocompromised, or otherwise at risk
- Practice social distancing so we can all work together to flatten the curve—even if you’re young and healthy you could spread the virus to someone who’s not
- If you’re sick or at risk of being infected, be careful to tie up your trash tightly to make sure to lessen the risk of exposure for your local sanitation worker
- Remember that people who live on the margins of society will be the most impacted economically, so do what you can to support them
- Give your cleaner the time off but still pay her
- Give your nanny paid sick leave if you can afford it
- Pay your hairdresser in advance for your next haircut
- Pay your nail tech in advance for your next manicure
- Buy gift certificates at your local restaurant, hair salon, or nail salon to use later to help keep them afloat
- Instead of returning your theater tickets, donate the money to the theater so they can continue to pay their employees
- If you know a marketable skill that can be done online (web design, coding, etc.), teach it to someone else
- If you have money, share it
- If you have time, share it
- If you have a social network, support someone who doesn’t
- Schedule a phone call or Skype date with someone who you suspect could be feeling lonely from the social isolation
- If you’re single or live alone, partner up with a “Coronavirus buddy” so you have someone to share hugs with (as long as you’re each keeping your distance from everyone else)
- Join your local Nextdoor to stay connected and keep abreast of neighborhood news
- If someone around you coughs or sneezes, don’t immediately look at them like they’re a leper
- Be kind to others when shopping
- Practice patience with your friends or family who seem overly anxious, and support them without being invalidating
- Practice patience with your friends and family who aren’t following all of the guidelines, and teach them how to do the right thing with compassion
- Whatever the tone of your average social media post, make it 10% nicer (everyone’s under high stress right now so we can all be set off easily)
- Be 10% more curious about other’s points of view than you normally are
- Care 10% about the social good than you normally do
- Share a roll of toilet paper with someone who needs it
- Share a bottle of Purell with someone who needs it
- Make a meal for someone who needs one
- Only buy the food or household supplies you need so there’s enough available for everyone
- Thank any doctors, nurses, or other healthcare providers you know for all the work they’re doing to keep us safe
- Thank any respiratory therapists you know—they’re at very high risk for contracting the virus and help keep us breathing when we’re sick
- If you have gloves or masks, especially N95 masks (the kind that filters small particles), donate them to your local hospital—doctors and nurses are already needing to reuse masks or make their own masks from office supplies
- If you know how to sew, make masks to help hospitals with their shortages
- Keep yourself as healthy as possible and avoid unnecessary health risks—the ER might not have the bandwidth to handle your broken arm from drag racing, for example
- Postpone any elective procedures you have scheduled so the doctor’s time and medical supplies that would be used for you are available for someone else who needs them more
- Donate blood if you can—there are major shortages right now because the Red Cross has had to cancel their blood drives
- Share Coronavirus memes… because laughter, like Coronavirus, is contagious
- Set up a “drop zone” on your doorstep for your food delivery person so they can stay 6 feet apart when they deliver your food
- Keep yourself informed by checking the CDC website regularly—the situation is evolving daily and we all need to do our part to be informed citizens
- Subscribe to an online news site to support the journalists who are working so hard to keep us in the know
- Share your Netflix password with someone who needs some entertainment
- Work to restore the sense of community we in the United States enjoyed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001; be more kind, civil, tolerant and patient with everyone you encounter
- When this is all over we’ll look back and reflect on the role we played during this collective period of difficulty: set an example that you can be proud of 🙂
Have anything you want me to add to the list? Leave a comment and let me know!
From the Dean of the Division I work with at Boston Conservatory at Berklee
And The People Stayed Home – Kitty O’Meara
“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”
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A NOTE I SENT ALL MY FRIENDS
I have been very involved in the mask making here in MA. I have a dear friend who has a pillow business and they are sewn in New Bedford and Fall River. All the factories are being repurposed to make masks. They have been working on a prototype that will be effective and the factories should be up and running today. If you want to make masks for yourself and family that is great, but the hospitals and especially the ORs have to have a mask that filters (Lahey did not have any masks the end of last week, even for the OR). If you want to read an interesting article, take a look at this one. I have put my friend’s group that is organizing the stitching on the South Coast with these young people. Joseph Abboud is leading the group as he has one of the biggest factories.
(Warning!) To put my political 2 cents in, it makes me very angry that we as a state have to be doing this for our health care workers! Our government should have been on top of this in January.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/22/metro/mask-making-projects-are-popping-all-over-crafters-mobilize-against-coronavirus/
Elana,
This isn’t to add to your list or for comments. Just an fyi.
About two years ago I worked with a N.Y. doctor when we were both volunteering in a medical mission to Haiti. I remember thinking “How could it be any worse than this?” Saturday I heard that there are now two infection cases in Haiti.
He’s back in the city working in the Einstein ER. Until I got a hands neuropathy following a chemo for colon cancer, I was doing home infusion therapies with aids and cancer patients. Now, with the New York State request, I’m signed up with other medical people to be back-up for a lot of staffs in trouble. If I’m lucky I’ll get a chance to work with him again.
He wrote two days ago: “Nurse Wheeled a patient into the Covid zone.
Short of Breath. Not too bad. 50’s. Make. He said “oh shit, this is
where they take you to die”. And proceeded to say the Our Father.
But what shocked me is that a handful of other patients joined him.”
Speaking of Haiti, there exists a tradition of gross ineptitude in Western medicine.
During her earthquake recovery, hundreds died from lack of anti-biotics. Simple and serious wounds killed—while all were surrounded by one of ths most powerful anti-bacterials in existence: S U G A R!
So, that option was purposely kept hidden by Western doctors there, to protect Big Dumb Pharma’s profits—just as D3 (( charges the immune system )) and vitamin C (( boosts immune system; and China’s doctors now use IVc to cure corvid-19 patients )) and zinc acetate (( a powerfull immunity bullet )) and other nutriceuticals – all of which boost immune function to guard health – are being kept hidden by our mainstram medical folks. -Rick
If you have tested positive and are quarantined at home, please be very careful with how you dispose of trash. Tie bags tightly to lessen exposure to sanitation workers.
Thank you this list. Please remember that respiratory therapists are at a very high risk and they are needed to help people breathe that are having difficulties.
Also be kind when shopping. Nobody is there to hurt you they just need supplies.
The whole world is in this together.
Thanks again for your hard work.
Grateful for you and your insight and positivity as always
Sing. Just sing. Sing the words you want to say about your experience and don’t make it about anyone but yourself. At this time it is too easy to lash out at irresponsible people and we all have our ideas of who they may be. Write poetry about your fear, your pain, even your distrust. Just don’t aim judgements at anyone. No one asked for this. If you are well, help someone who is vulnerable, while keeping safe distance. We all deserve to be looked after by one another. Perhaps that is part of the challenge….too many of us weren’t looked after in a loving way, so there becomes a nonchalant attitude; even a nonchalant attitude about ourselves and our own vulnerability. There was a song in the 70s that had a line in it that said “and when you feel afraid, love one another” “light of the world, shine on me. Love is the answer.” Love is staying home. Love is remembering that immunocompromised people are out there and we don’t know what any of us has been exposed to. Love is remembering that it is not all about us…It is about ALL of us.
Last night I dreamt that my Cancer was back and I was starting chemo again . it sucked and at the same time, it taught me that MANY more people who have been healthy their whole lives are afraid now. There are those of us that have known serious illness and there are those of us who fear having a serious illness, especially in these days and times when we don’t know if we are safe.
I guess what it all comes down to is just being an example of responsibility and caring without putting ourselves or others at risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QagzdvzzHBQ&feature=youtu.be
Turn up the volume and get some love from the young musicians at Berklee College of Music…