How to find peace in this time of chaos and uncertainty

We are living through a crazy time, confining ourselves and leaving the house only for essentials like grocery and medical care. We are trying to take care of our children, becoming their teachers, entertainers, caregivers, 24 hours a day. We are living all day with our partner and we feel that it is too much, or we are separated for different reasons and we feel helpless because we don't know when we will hug him again...

It is imperative that we find some structure and peace in this new reality, where life as we knew it has completely changed, at least for a while.

As much as we, parents, try to make things structured and pleasurable for our children, we NEED to take care of ourselves to preserve our mental health and to continue taking care of our children and loved ones.

At Open Source Wellness, experts created a Universal Prescription:

MOVE, NOURISH, CONNECT and BE, which helps take care of our physical, mental, social and emotional well-being. And to that I would add another important element these days, maybe the most important for me: LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY.

What resonates most with me, from the original Universal Prescription, besides the undeniable physical need for movement and good food, is the NEED TO CONNECT.

We all need to feel connected, we need to feel seen, heard, and understood, and to see, hear and understand other loved human beings. And since this won't just happen these days, we need to make time for it, plan for it, ask for it.

And these days also ask that we understand each other more, that we realize that we all have different needs, different stories, different ways to cope with difficulty, and that leads me to the extra element I added to the Prescription: LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY.

LOVE YOUR LOVED ONES more than you would in "normal" times. Understand the bad moods of your mother or father, maybe they are worried or tired. Love your children more, understand their tantrums, their complaints, their boredom...life as they knew it has changed and their are trying to adjust. Don't pick on your siblings for being in your living space because they have no choice these days and they are trying hard to make things easy for themselves and for the whole family.

LOVE YOUR SPOUSE with more patience, more understanding, more tenderness than ever before. Stay close to her respecting her needs, not yours. Give him the extra space he needs and he'll feel your love even more from a distance. Understanding has always been the key, but these days we are called to increase enormously our ability to understand and respect our loved ones.

All this is achieved by taking good care of ourselves, and allow ourselves to BE. For many people this means giving ourselves time to meditate and go to a calm, quiet space of serenity, but it doesn't have to.

BE means giving ourselves time to pause long enough to allow our nervous system to go back to normal levels after all the preparing, adjusting, responding, providing that we do during the day. It can be watching an old movie or funny videos on YouTube, reading or doing something quiet that we enjoy... whatever lets us slow down.

So, let's try to intentionally MOVE, NOURISH, CONNECT, LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY and BE every day to create a new structure that can help us move through this moment safely, while making ourselves stronger and more resilient.

We are in this together, let's help each other in any possible way.

With Love and Gratitude

Ref. Four things to do every day for your mental health by Elizabeth Markle