Change is hard. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small change or a big one, change inevitably leaves me feeling unsettled and always seems to take me much longer to adjust than it really should. The unknown exacerbates my anxiety, as I imagine the worst possible outcomes and try to prepare.
I hate change, and there is a lot of it on the horizon. In the world, I feel like I have finally adjusted and gotten used to this “new way” of life, and now it is all beginning to change back. I’m not ready for that yet...I’m not ready for large crowds full of unmasked people. I’m not ready for the whole world to resume the intense obsession with productivity that we finally broke out of in the early days of the pandemic. The last year has allowed us a unique opportunity to look closely at our mental health and actually prioritize that over expectations from others. For a whole year, it has been globally accepted that it’s okay to not be okay, and I am not ready for that to not be true anymore. As much as I crave aspects of a return to normalcy, the all-in way we seem to be approaching it is too fast and terrifying for me.
This return to “normal” has been particularly hard for me to embrace, because of the timing of Reed’s birth and death. My world was turned upside down three months before the pandemic. I didn’t realize until we lost Reed how much one’s identity changes after a loss of such abrupt magnitude. I had to relearn who I was, particularly as so much of my identity and my vision of the future during the previous nine months was defined by being a mother. When my son died, I didn’t know what that looked like anymore. It took me a long time to learn how to be his mother, when I couldn’t tuck him into bed and play with him and watch him grow. When our day to day lives began to resume a sense of normalcy in early 2020, it was terrifying to me, because I still looked like a woman without a child. I felt as though I had never been pregnant at all, and the whole thing had instead been some drawn out dream that only I remembered. Just as I was beginning to reintegrate into society and learning how to navigate my new reality, ”normal” disappeared for the whole world. Suddenly, I no longer had to worry about simply resuming the life I was living before my son was born, because it didn’t exist anymore. In many ways, this was a relief to me. No longer was I the only one struggling to understand how to survive.
I learned to adapt to this new version of life - the grief version and the Covid version - simultaneously. I rebuilt my life in a world that is once again becoming unrecognizable. Now that things are going back to normal, I find myself having to adjust again, and learn once again how to carve out space for my motherhood and my son. I feel echoes of the same fear that I did before the pandemic - that life will go back to the way it was before Reed was born, and as we all get used to that again, we will forget what it felt like to grieve together.
Perhaps as a way to shield myself from this, I have accepted a new position in my district. I actually really enjoyed teaching remotely this year, and I am simply not ready to go back into a classroom. My district is launching an all-remote program for K-12 graders that should look somewhat similar to the structures I had in place this past school year. I am excited to be a part of it, excited to help create something that hasn’t existed before, and absolutely terrified by the change. It means saying goodbye to the school that has been my home for the past five years. It means leaving a team of people that I know and trust, and launching into the unknown. It means embarking into wholly uncharted territory and helping to create a program from scratch. Exciting, absolutely. But frightening, as well.
The first part of this summer has involved transforming one of our upstairs bedrooms into an office, now that I will permanently be working from home. I’ve slowly and carefully unpacked the boxes I brought home from school. That process in itself has been difficult for me. I believe most teachers have a bit of hoarder in them; we hold onto materials far longer than we need to, because you never know when you might use them again. I’ve managed to leave behind or throw away boxes and boxes of materials, letters from students, lesson plans from my early days of teaching - things I’ve been able to hold onto for years, because I used to have an entire classroom to store those memories in. I’ve spent days organizing my new office. Organization has always been one of my greatest weaknesses, so this has been an uncomfortable but necessary challenge.
It has been exciting and frightening to begin this process and realize just how different next year will look. Most terrifying of all, leaving Bradford means walking away from the only community that ever fully knew Reed. They celebrated and cried tears of joy with me when I finally got pregnant with him. They held my hand and reassured me during those nine months. They supported us when we came home without him, and let me take my time in returning to work. They celebrated with us on his first birthday, finding a way to show us that Reed would be remembered and loved while also respecting our broken hearts. They say his name and love him, because he was real to them. Because he is real to them. While any new people in my work life will certainly hear me talk about Reed, they will never know him the way those who were there do.
All of these changes, while they are exciting and necessary, leave me feeling rattled. I see our lives beginning to move forward again, to shift and grow in new directions, and it makes me wonder. We have worked so hard this past year and a half to carve out a space for Reed in our daily lives - as that life continues to change, how will he grow and shift along with us, when he is not here to do so himself? How can we make sure there is always space for him, and how can we introduce him into new communities who may not see him as real? This is the hard truth of parenthood for our family - the fear that our son will fade behind us as life moves forward is ever present, and it is this fear I fight against every day.
While the reasons behind my anxieties may be unique, I think the fear of change is far from it. I am likely not the only one who feels my chest tighten at the thought of post-pandemic life. There is comfort in familiarity. Even when change is welcome and leads to new opportunities, it disrupts that sense of comfort. I know the next few months will be a challenge - some days will be wonderful and the return to normal life will be a welcome relief. Other days will feel unfamiliar and intrusive, and knowing that is the case helps me breathe through those days when they arrive. One thing I know for sure is that there simply is no going back. Fortunately, change doesn't happen all at once. I will take these changes one small step at a time, sometimes moving forward and other times just waiting to catch my breath until I am brave enough to continue once again. And on the days when I am not okay? That's still okay.
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