How COVID Taught me Proper Compassion

I started the pandemic by moving into a new home, a new environment and starting my sober journey. To be honest, my mental health and self-esteem were at quite a low point when this entire pandemic began. I spent the first year working on various aspects of myself, including how to be compassionate to past versions of Hillary for what she did not know and what 20-20 hindsight had allowed me to understand. The compassion I started to offer myself, I believe, allowed me to be a better and more compassionate person to those around me who were struggling with COVID realities much more difficult than mine.

I've spent, and still am spending, much of this COVID time being overworked because I can't sit still. I have not seen my mom in person in a year and a half and at times have felt isolated because I have very few friends in the suburbs of Ottawa. That being said, I have multiple jobs, a roof over my head, a family, friends I can call, and so many social media platforms to air my opinions I shouldn't feel lonely at all. MY friends have different levels of hardships. Some have been unemployed and relied on CERB, some have moved, some have not seen family the entire time, some were forced to share space with family that they didn't intend to. A lot of us made plans in between waves which were cancelled. There are so many conversations where I felt I couldn't complain about my hardships because I knew they weren't as bad as the hardships the person listening to me speak was going through. 

My therapist reminded me that what is hard for me, may be easy for others and vice-versa. We all have had different hardships and lives, and while my sense of "life difficulties" has been skewed because of my traumas, it doesn't mean working retail during the pandemic was easy just because it was employment and complaining about that reality doesn't lessen the hardships of the people I know. I've called this realization COVID-Comparisons because trying to compare different realities during a pandemic is actually futile. We all have been struggling, past or present tense. Some people in the Maritimes are doing much better now that lockdown has eased up. Ontario is finally reopening the economy. We also still have a long way to go to normal, or a new normal, and still feeling icky about it all is okay! 

In French, my mom would say "mets ta grain de sel dans ta soupe" - essentially mind your business/stay in your own lane/focus on yourself. I don't think this pandemic was easy on anyone and the one thing I took away from it was to be kind to anyone who was struggling with it in any way. Sure being sad you can't go to the cottage is more privileged than those who are jobless, but both are sucky realities. This pandemic was just another reminder to myself that we don't know everyone's truths or realities. If we always act as if people are suffering and hiding it under the surface (like my website Second Glances has pointed out) then that kindness can outweigh the suffering - pandemic suffering or regular suffering.