You can’t spell challenge without change. 

Right now we all experiencing change.  It has shown up in everything from our work life, home life, schooling, child-rearing, and even in our ideologies.  This new change is uncomfortable. It’s making us rethink different areas our lives and encouraging us to adjust. This disruption in our regularly scheduled programming - our 12-month calendar, is starting to look more like our “new normal.”  Our world is changing and this time change has collided with a virus that has forced us to slow down and sit down.

 Adapting to this hasn’t been easy and it’s not going to get any easier. When anything goes through a period of change the result of that change is most often binary, it’s either a positive change or negative, because with change comes choice. We have, perhaps, become too accustomed to the routine.  Wake up, eat breakfast, drop the kids off, go to work, eat dinner, feed the kids, go to sleep, repeat.  Some of us have become aficionados of excuses. We keep putting off goals we’ve had for years because “we don’t’ have enough time.” Others have gotten too comfortable relying on technology to parent. Then there are those who have kept our heads down, living in a little bubble, subconsciously choosing not to see the inequities and racial injustices specifically in our country.  

 There is no avoiding this change. Now, there is only choice.  What will you choose, positive or negative? Glass half full or half-empty? Rose-colored glasses or reality? Are you working on your health, perhaps growing a garden? Have you finally started reading that pile of books? Are you learning about the country’s history or asking questions and educating yourself so your bubble and world views can grow a little larger?   

It’s been over 100 days of quarantine and counting. Some of us have barely left our homes, most of us are working 8+ hours a day in front of a computer screen. We have been presented with this opportunity, TO change. We have to come out of this different as individuals and as a nation. The world has opened up a sea of possibilities and opportunities and we would be doing ourselves a disservice, not to at least try.