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Dad shaved every day of WWII.

No matter where he was or what he was doing. He said it was to keep morale up. It took me a long time to realize he wasn’t speaking of his men’s morale but his own. Part of the time he was teaching winter survival training. Part of the time he was In England helping to organize the long road full of stuff headed off on D-day. Part of the time he was moving large convoys of tanker trucks full of gas. But he shaved because it was the one act of normalcy he could do in a world that was anything but normal.

Sound familiar?

When we had our girls and they were newborns, just taking a shower was a huge accomplishment for me. But the act of that, taking a shower, getting in fresh clothes and moving into my day made me feel better. Then cancer and the same thing. First it was so glorious to shower because you have to heal from the mastectomy so it is a marker of healing time. Then getting up, making breakfast and lunch for my kids and seeing them off to school made me feel better during chemo. It wiped me out though, so I would go back to bed until they came home to mom, post fresh shower, in real clothes, waiting to help with homework and make dinner.

Morale.

What works for you? A shower for me, make up, a fluff of my hair, jeans instead of pjs or work out clothes. It is different each day. Working out, yoga, walking, pilates, or just my 4 “keeping my back together” exercises count toward me feeling human.

But we need to find those things that make this abnormal world feel normal.

The glorious nature of this time is that our daughters are getting some time together before our youngest goes off to college this fall. What a gift. It is different having everyone home. There are four years between them so for the last four years our youngest has been an only child a lot of the time.

So what is it for you? What is the bright side? And what do you need to do for your morale?

Share with a comment and let us know.

We will get through this and we will need to decide what the lessons are that we take away from this time. Do we want to go back to normal?

What does that even mean anymore? Look at how the world has changed over the first 3 months of this year. Water and sky is cleaner, wildlife is coming back to places it hasn’t been, traffic is very low to non-existent. Remember to look at the positives.

How do you want to reframe or redesign your life to reflect this new knowledge.

For some of us there will be a relief in going back to work. Absolutely, but what will you do with your free time? Will you plan every second or take the time to look at the sky and listen to the birds? Will you change the course of your career? Will you write that book?

For those of you who are struggling with finances or food or homeschooling or anxiety. I know it is difficult. We are all reaching our breaking points from time to time. Some of us need to ask for help and that is ok. It is more than ok and for those of us who just need to yell, or cry or scream. .. We just need to allow those reactions some space and then come back to ourselves a bit.

We can’t control everything but we can control our reactions to it.