Day 514: I don’t want to talk about Covid anymore

The last time I started a post was 360 days ago, on “COVID-19 Pandemic, Day 154.” My friend had just died. 

It was covid related, but not covid. He wasn’t rushed to the hospital with shortness of breath, no invasive intubation, no taking his last breaths through a machine, surrounded by healthcare workers made unrecognizable by PPE. 

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My QuaranTeam: A FaceTime Photo Session with Jordan Ashleigh

During early quarantine, it was trendy to have a family portrait taken on your front steps. A photographer would come, stand 6+ feet away, and send you an edited shot free of charge, with the request that you would make a donation to the food bank or another charity. It was popularized in our area by local photographers Jenna Stern and Michelle Gurner. But I saw friends getting their photos taken for “The Porch Project” all the way down in Texas.

Another thing that I saw a few families do was a FaceTime photo session. I wasn’t really sold on the idea until I saw Jordan Ashleigh‘s work. I loved how her vintage vibe worked with the quality of the FaceTime photos, rather than against it. I had to have some of her work!

We scheduled the shoot on Memorial Day, and that afternoon we had our first visit with another family since the quarantine began months before. It was the beginning of a new era–reintegrating with friends. These pictures are extra special to me, as they represent the end of the strictest of this (first wave?? hopefully only) quarantine and the ways that our little fam spent our individual quarantine time.

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COVID-19 Quarantine: Day 25

Spent week three of social distancing trying not to succumb to despair. Hope feels like a distant memory, but I have to remember that any moment in time is just as fleeting as spring-it comes, it blooms, it withers, and new things are on the horizon.

Daffodils in my backyard

I don’t have a lot of hope for what’s happening, what will happen next or after that. Dark times are here and more are following. But in dark times there are still bright moments. You find something someone else planted, years before you, in your own backyard. For brief moments, your home feels just like home, not the fortress from fear of what surrounds us. There is still sunshine, flowers, food in the pantry, and love even in a world full of sickness, death, greed and corruption.

Positive thinking and self care won’t cure the hurt I feel for the outside world, but as I go through this fourth week of #quarantine, I’ll try to shift my focus to the moments right in front of me.

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