Two lifetimes ago, I remember sitting across from my boss discussing my career trajectory and a five year plan. I worked in event planning for a restaurant group so a discussion like this should have been in my wheel house - I loved planning and coordinating and negotiating. But it wasn’t. At the time, I was a new mom and challenged, in a good way, with work. That was about all I could handle. Five years felt like a very long ways away and, right then, I just knew that my next stop needed to be my afternoon iced coffee. I never came up with that five year plan, I did however get the iced coffee because, priorities.

Over the last few years this conversation would replay in my head as I was administering Adelaide’s meds or chauffeuring her to the next appointment. What was my life plan? Where did I go from here? That’s when I decided that five year plans are bs. In fact I even wrote that in the notes app of my phone at some point as a friendly reminder to myself. Several weeks ago I wrote about how we have to accept and acknowledge what we have control of and what we don’t. In theory thats all good and splendid right? I stand by that still but the gravity of our current situation has settled a little heavier since then. It has become clear that our lives have been forever altered, they will never be the same. There will be before this pandemic and after. Sort of like 9/11. Remember going through security and not taking your shoes off? Remember seeing an abandoned bag and not giving it a second thought? We cannot even begin to imagine what life on the other side of this looks like.

I’ve been trying my hardest to live day by day, as Adelaide taught/forced me to. Back then it was, would we be able to meet up with friends tomorrow or would we be in the emergency department? Who knew! But this is a different kind of day by day, because I know that tomorrow is going to look exactly like it did today, and the next day, and the next day. The unknown is when will life be different? Not back to normal because that won’t happen, but just… different? 

That’s been one of my biggest struggles as of late. I was working through my grief by having dates, events, trips to look forward to. I was distracting myself with plans for our move and decorating our new home in New Jersey. In those moments I felt productive, a little bit like me again. Our family will still leave Chicago for New Jersey but now the date is uncertain and decorating came to a grinding halt in tandem with our income. I don’t even know when we will see that house again. How do we plan for the future when we don’t know when, where or what it looks like in the most basic sense? 

We don’t. It’s such a disorienting truth when we have been told our entire lives that to be successful we have to plan for the future. Many of us are familiar with living financially hand-to-mouth but we are now experiencing life hand-to-mouth and no one can tell us when that will change. For those of us working through grief or addiction or illness, the inability to move forward in life can be detrimental to our well-being. The great pause I’ve heard it called. But while some may be treading water there are those of us who are treading tar and it’s exhausting.

Compounding factors have made this week extra difficult: Sunday marking six months without Adelaide topping the list. I would say that I’ve had a major grief regression, my psychiatrist would say it’s not a regression and that grief isn’t a linear path - my bed and the tissue boxes disagree. I confessed to Miguel the other night that I felt broken. I thought I had been sorting through the pieces of my life but now they are so far scattered and I don’t even have the energy to look for them. My mother would say that is the depression talking. But how do you make emotional progress in times like these? Honestly, I’m not sure you do. That said there are a few thoughts that I keep coming back to. In sharing this with my mother she told me that considering my grief prior to Covid it would be bizarre if I wasn’t struggling a little more than usual. Miguel followed that up a few days later by reminding me that my response to my grief and this situation has been normal. Then I checked in with myself and asked if, all things considered, I was doing the best I could. Not my Herculean best but my practical best. It’s ok I’m struggling more. This is normal. I’m doing the best I can. It’s ok I’m struggling more. This is normal. I’m doing the best I can. I’m. Doing. The. Best. I. Can.

Forget your five year plan. We cannot prepare for whatever is coming next. All we can do is the best we can in this moment. This doesn’t lessen the pain, ease any disappointment or mitigate the struggle but maybe we can cut ourselves some slack and just survive.