2022 - The Year That Went By

As we are gearing up to welcome 2023, many of us are eagerly making resolutions for the year that is yet to come, while some are looking back at the year that has gone by. As always, I decided to do the latter and this time, like in 2019, 2020, & 2021 (images below), I decided to record it here for me to be able to revisit it anytime in the future! 😃

We welcomed the year 2022 with my daughter making a premonition kind of statement, ‘Amma the coming year is 2022. 22 is 2 times 11. I just hope the year does not end up being 2 times the year 2011. Fingers crossed.’

My first reaction was horror because 2011 was one of the toughest until 2022 came to be. 😊That was the year when I was pregnant with my second-born son, dealing with the palliative care for my Father-in-law (FIL) in his final stages of cancer, playing the host for my sister-in-law during her laparoscopic surgery & recovery, Grihapravesam (calling it house warming kind of simplifies the concept as well the work involved in organising it), passing of my FIL, birth of my son, my post-partum, a beginning of the undoing of a marital relationship of a close family member, being a witness when the family was grieving that loss of its head (my FIL), moving into our new owned home. Did you also take a deep breath like I did when I finished typing this recap? 

Now to a rundown of the year 2022… It began with our family being affected with COVID in Jan 2022, when India was having its third wave, including my pregnant sibling who did an international travel in the hope to be with family to handle her pregnancy and delivery in India rather than staying in a foreign country, all by herself (with just her spouse for support). I joined Lurnable (a digital EdTech firm) as Operations Manager. I became a facilitator of the programme #IamRemarkable (a Google Initiative) and have also conducted two workshops this year. We had a scare in April for a really pre-mature labour that might have been critical for the child for sure, and to the mother (mentally and emotionally). We had a few hospitalisations for my Mom, Sister & her Spouse, and my Aunt. Health-related issues that come and go for our ageing parents. Loss of lives – 2 within the family and one a child (less than 15 yrs old) who was a close buddy of my son in our gated community, a beautiful soul who always stood up against playground bullies (for my son) and had deep conversations on the concepts of care, right & wrong, integrity and more. Of course, my niece was an addition to the family as a healthy child who decided to stay full term after the initial scare, sharing the same star sign as my son. They both bonded instantly and every time they are together, the mutual love and adoration is a pleasure to watch.

I became a homeowner. I wrote my first semester exams for my M.Sc Counselling Psychology (2 year Masters course) that I am currently pursuing. I published an e-book on Blogchatter and have been roped in on another authoring project by Let’s Author to collaborate with a few more authors for the book ‘How to Parent in a Crazy World – Life Lessons on New Age Parenting’ to be published sometime next year (Click the link to pre-order the book). Amidst all this, we transitioned from a pandemic lifestyle to a post-pandemic new normal (whatever that means)… and the craziness has not ended yet. 

And in all this, I also managed to hold on to my reading. Thanks to Blogchatter’s TBR Challenge, this year I tracked the books that I read (which probably only covers 50% of what I read). Another big sigh…

While this year probably looked twice the challenge of the year 2011, it has been a mixed bag, which can be said about almost any year that comes and goes. I resonate very strongly with the Yin-Yang symbolism, a philosophical concept that describes opposite but interconnected forces. While the literature on Yin-Yang philosophies & interpretations is available in abundance, my simplified explanation for this is in the lines of the dialogue from Alavandhan Movie ‘Kadavul Paadhi Mirugam Paadhi kalandhu seidha kalavai naan’ (crudely translated – I am the perfect mix of God & Animal/Devil). The deeper meaning that I infer is that there is no absolute good or absolute bad in this world. There is a little bit of good in bad and a little bit of bad in good and these two exist in perfect balance for the whole to be complete. Here the good and bad can be represented in black or white colour, and the symbolism stays intact.

In this exercise of looking back at the year gone by, which I have been doing since 2019, I have come to understand that every year brings with it a mixed bag of experiences – a few successes, a few misses/loses, loads of learnings from both to take away for the years to come, wonderful experiences that enrich our life by becoming stories & narratives to tell and take forward. I am filled with gratitude and pride. Gratitude for the learnings and achievements, pride at surviving the year. I think I am going to hold on to this practice of looking back at the year that has gone by just so that I practice self-love and self-appreciation which in turn positively impacts self-image and self-confidence by increasing self-awareness. What better way to enrich our mental wellness than this. 😊

I am not the type to make resolutions, but I guess the practice of looking back at the year that has passed, that I began in 2019, is a resolution that happened on its own accord and will probably stay for years to come. Will be happy to hear your retrospective of 2022 in the “comment” section.

Wishing you all a very happy new year 2023 to come, and along with it a lot of personal/professional growth & development also. 

 

This post also wraps up the #TBRChallenge by Blogchatter for the year 2022. I'm participating in the #TBRChallenge by Blogchatter

Pandemic and Family Wellbeing

Last year, 2021, I signed up for #CauseAChatter, when I was told by Team Blogchatter that most of my blogs submitted under blogrolls qualify for the same. I stuck with the programme all through the year. Come 2022, January brought with it some great changes and some not so great ones as well. The first great thing was the certificate for being part of the CauseAChatter for 2021.

I have been offered a job in a start-up overseeing their HR operations, which is a huge thing for someone who has had a very non-traditional career path. I also decided that I wanted to pursue Masters (Post Graduation) now, 2+ decades after I completed my undergraduate studies. I was really hoping that the COVID situation will ease out with some semblance of normalcy returning into our lives.

Unfortunately, Omicron seemed to have a different idea altogether. Slowly cases are rising which has brought online schools back in full force. Even the glimmer hope that a form asking parental consent on sending older children to regular offline school just got squashed. 2+ years of online school, work from home (WFH) alternating between with and without domestic help, based on the circumstances, have had their toll on my mental health.

I was curious to know if I was the only one facing burnout and talked to some friends and found that many were going through a similar phase. It got me thinking. Here are some things that I deduced from my discussions with peers and friends on what contributes to this burnout:

• Stunted Social Life: Restricted movements and the social distancing protocols of COVID appropriate behaviour leaves us all stuck indoors with just our family, and a few friends/neighbours who live close by our place. This is even more so when we are not in a financially privileged position to hire a private transport from our place to someone else’s place far from home.
• Stunted Vacations: Vacations are the time to unwind. Irrespective of ones’ financial prowess, we would have one family vacation at least every 2 years away from our place of residence to enjoy the few days of change of routines or the lack of it, excitement of exploring a new place (small village or huge city), or just a change of scenery to break the monotony of life. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been possible for obvious reasons.
• Virtual Workplaces: While there are benefits of virtual workspaces that help in keeping the continuity of work and by extension, business, and economics, it is still not an option for all. Also, the virtual workspace, I think is stunted as well, especially with respect to human interactions as it lacks the decorum that an actual workplace can provide.
• Stunted Learning for Children: Children thrive with social interactions that involve all their senses. Online learning has them glued to the screens and a chair with no friend close by to snicker or bicker. The attention span that was already very low, to begin with has become almost negligible due to the monotony of the online classrooms.
• Lack of personal time and space for primary care givers: For homemakers like me who hustle between homemaker and consultant/businesswomen at our convenience (read when the rest of the family is out and about, away from home), the pandemic lifestyle has been the toughest, catering to the demands of the family bringing order among the chaos that COVID brought into the daily routines by completely throwing it off track. Despite the repeated reassurance given by experts that the pandemic will soon move into the endemic mode, the light at the end of the tunnel is still not visible, especially considering the lack of change in human behaviour that is exhibited by leaders and common people alike.

Usually, when I write, I like to make sure that I also give a few pointers on how to address the issue at hand. While I do know I can give some, for the above-stated problem too, I am not sure they are enough to address the problem of burnout that people like me (Indian women, who are the unopposed primary caregivers with no choice to play the role of a secondary caregiver) are going through. And this burnout is not restricted to just people like me. It has affected every individual irrespective of age, gender, economic status and other such associated identifiers. The online space is also not safe enough to discuss our issues and vulnerabilities without a troll or a few dropping in and adding to our already overflowing basket of woes. With such a bleak picture, a deep sigh escapes me more often than usual and I find myself wishing fervently for the end to be near, for everyone's sake.

The need for safe spaces for everyone to be able to share their vulnerabilities, pain points, and frustrations has become a priority. Unfortunately, as a race, we humans have still, not even taken the first step to understanding ourselves and the biases that drive our behaviours and life choices. We are a long way from creating such safe spaces for healthy sharing and the probable start of beneficial discussions that can initiate a change.

I believe that miracles are a result of small intentional actions that would eventually drive a tsunami-like shift in our behavioural patterns, that feels like a miracle. Let us all together pledge to do our share of small intentional actions such as being self-aware, observing what is happening around us, and acting when we see someone in need of a break at least when they ask for it, shifting our focus from excellence to consistent progress (even is student performance – as parents and educators), and more.

Do share your thoughts on what other small intentional actions can bring about the tsunami-like wave that looks like a miracle?

This blog is part of Blogchatter’s #CauseAChatter challenge, #MentalHealth, #Discrimination, #AccessToEducation.