As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, many of us have found our daily routines turned upside down. Rhythms and relationships are changing faster than many of us feel we can keep up. Institutions that we relied on are no longer available, or at least not in the same way. We are all adjusting to this new normal.

My family’s experience of all this has been a somewhat uncommon one. My partner has been working from home for almost 25 years. I’ve been working from home in various jobs for about 16. Almost 8 years ago we began alternatively educating our four children. So our family was already accustomed to being home, together, a lot. We, too, are missing classes, meetings, and time with friends and extended family right now, but our days in the house have not been stressful or filled with conflict.  

I remember when they were though. I remember the days of staring at my husband, my favorite person in the world, and thinking, “How are we ever going to manage spending this much time together!?” And I’m an extrovert! Similarly, as years went by and children were added to our ranks, there were angst-filled seasons of trying to meet everyone’s needs, mediate conflicts, and maintain some semblance of adult sanity. Transitions are often grating. We feel irritated and sensitive, raw. But those feelings can and do pass. So I hope by sharing with you some of what is not only working for us now, but has been working consistently for a long time, that you may find some easier ways to create a new rhythm in your house. That you will be able to adjust relatively quickly instead of stumbling in the dark for years like we did.

1. Do your own work: I don’t mean what is due to your employer or your share of household tasks.  I mean the difficult internal work of meeting yourself. We all have grief work to do.  We all had expectations and plans about how the next week, not to mention the next year, was going to go.  We are all facing different levels of financial, emotional, and physical strain. It requires a great deal of courage to acknowledge the realities of the grief we are facing.  With the future being unknown it can feel dangerous to venture into grief. Like it might never end. I promise it does. Grief is like waves. It ebbs and flows. Some days the currents are stronger than others.  But much like the actual ocean, turning our backs on grief is the quickest way to be overwhelmed by surprise. When we face our grief, allow tears to flow, allow anger and confusion to move through us - they all tend to in fact, flow through.  Like breathing in and breathing out. Doing your own work - naming what has been uniquely lost by you and how you feel about it - creates internal space into which you can begin to welcome those around you.
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2. ​Abandon authoritarianism: Increased time together, in shared space, can be an invitation to move away from seeing others as cogs in the machine of daily grind and move towards re-envisioning one another as whole people.  This is true of partners, children, housemates, neighbors, and co-workers. Many of us unintentionally relate to others from a place of scarcity. The fear that there is not enough time, not enough resources, not enough sleep, not enough love.  If we work from the assumption that it is impossible for all needs to be met then we must put a lot of mental and emotional energy into prioritizing needs, creating hierarchy. Especially for parents or other caregivers, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that either our needs and desires must be met first, or that we must fully sacrifice ourselves to meet the needs of those around us.  This is somewhat maintainable when our regular routine gives us breaks and space from the demands of others. However, it is never sustainable in the long run. Times like these offer us an invitation to build consensual households. Where everyone’s needs matter and everyone is given consideration. I am not suggesting abdication of parental authority, nor denying the power dynamics inherent in adult-child relationships.  However, if we can move from a posture of, “How do I get through this” to “How can we best make this enjoyable for everyone” then we are no longer competing. We are all giving a little and taking a little to create realistic balance. We all need play and rest, togetherness and privacy. By working together we can create space and gift each other with feeling seen and heard.
   
   
3. Embrace Intentionality: For most of us, some aspects of our lives have been carefully chosen and curated while other parts have just seemed to happen.  We often fall backwards into routines provided for us by work, school, or religious activities and then try to fit the rest of life in-between.  In many ways, the disruption of those institutional rhythms feels like chaos, but I would like to suggest a reframe. Perhaps some of the disorientation we are feeling is the return of agency.  We get to choose again. We get to choose much of what our work day will look like, how and what our children will learn, how our spiritual health will be maintained, which relationships will be poured into and which ones will survive some distance.  That’s a lot of decisions to make. But not all of those decisions have to be made today. And no decision needs to be final. We have an opportunity in these days to really examine what works well for our household, and customize to that. No one needs to do what the neighbors are doing.  It is okay to do what works for you and your house, today. I encourage you, as much as you can, to enjoy this freedom to choose. To control what we can. To discover that you are capable of much more than you thought possible, and to do it all on purpose.
   
   
4. Practice calm, direct, honest communication: This may seem so obvious that you are wondering why I didn’t list it first!  In my experience, leaning into this kind of conversation depends on openness to the first three points. I have found that putting in the effort to make “I” statements builds in an accountability that is otherwise easily lost.  It is faster to tell my partner or child, “You need to…” when I am feeling frightened or otherwise stressed in a situation. Starting with “I need … from you” requires me to do my own work, abandon authoritarianism, and embrace intentionality. It also helps me to hear the deeper need out loud. Sometimes my concern is genuine, “Please don’t run with knives in the house!” But sometimes when I rephrase into an “I” statement I realize it’s really only me that has a problem, “I like the doll’s hair long.” Whether that is asking someone to climb down from a dangerous place, or to give me five more minutes to finish an email, making it an “I” statement allows me to express and stand up for my needs and invite the other to care for me. As opposed to making a demand on the other (“You need to …”) which immediately puts us in an adversarial who-matters-more dilemma at best. At worst, it shames and isolates us from one another.
   
   
5. Get in touch with your higher power: Whether you believe in God, in Love, in Justice, or in Science, the Source of that belief resides deep within you and extends far beyond you. (Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski break this down wonderfully in their book Burnout, which is a great read for times like these!).  There is an abundance of calm. There is nourishing peace. There is community even when we feel distanced. The trick is to connect with it. Practice attending to the particular things that point you to universal truths. Take a moment to look at the clouds and wonder at the bigness of the sky.  Appreciate the blooms on trees, consider how slowly they grow and yet how strong they stand. Listen to the birds, ask what makes your heart sing. Enjoy art, be curious about the experiences of another. Smell your coffee, practice gratitude. Try something grounding and integrative like coloring, box breathing, meditation, journaling or yoga.  Moments of calm are available throughout the day.  Learning where that calm lives in you, and being able to access it during days when breaks are few can help you pace yourself.  Your higher power is both within you and outside you, and here for times just like these.

In the coming weeks, community care needs will escalate exponentially as COVID-19 impacts continue to increase. Here are some ways you or your team can prepare: 

Creating a Trajectory Map
Use the Phases of Disaster as a starting place, and begin to draft a trajectory map for your organization or community. You can share your maps on twitter, facebook, instagram, or linked in, using hashtag #carerestores. 

As you're creating your map, consider the differences your organization or community are experiencing compared with traditional understandings of episodic or singular incident disasters. For example, many groups are finding their sense of the initial "hero" stage has been a far sharper incline or spike, as leaders and volunteers have rushed in this last week to solve as much as they can and now, even within just a week or two, are experiencing significant senses of fatigue. The fatigue appears to be related to a combination of the strong push to help along with the remarkable speed at which new information is released, often changing and becoming out-dated even hour by hour. 

Continue to use your map as a draft or living document with your team, a template that you can update over the coming weeks and months. 

Recognize the Range of Impact
Over the next several weeks and months, your clients, patients, or community members, will experience a range of impacts. Some of these will be directly COVID-19 related. For example:

• How will you or your team provide care to individuals who may be suffering or dying alone, unable to receive visitors? Will you provide them with phone calls, cards, or deliveries? 
• How will you or your team provide care to family members of those individuals, who are unable able to be with their loved ones as they suffer or die alone? 
• How will you encourage acts of memorial in times of physical distancing? 
• How are you or your team providing care to first responders, medical personnel, behavioral health personal, and emergency responders who are a part of your congregation or ministry group? 

Some of the impacts will be indirectly related to COVID-19. For example:

• How are you or your team providing care to clients, patients, or community members who are experiencing significant loss of income, loss of jobs, inability to access food, or inability to access medical care deemed non-urgent or unrelated to COVID-19? 
• How are you or your team providing care to clients, patients, or community members who are experiencing increased senses of grief, bereavement, anxiety, depression, or exacerbated symptoms related to pre-existing mental health challenges? 

Pacing Care for Sustainability
As you consider what needs already are present and what may be coming, in what ways can you and your staff pace and nourish yourselves now so that you can avoid burnout and provide sustainable care through the long-term? 

Here are some helpful resources for understanding trauma, pacing, and sustaining long-term care: 

• An example of a community collaboration effort for identifying emerging needs and making referrals
• Free ICTG resources (These network inventories are something proactive and concrete you can do today):
  • Personal Care Network Inventory
  • Professional Care Network Inventory
• An in-depth training manual

Further Reading:

• How Long Term Response to Pandemic Differs from Other Types of Disaster Response
• Metabolizing Adversity
• What Kind of Person are You in an Emergency?
• Preparing and Responding to Pandemic Virus​

One of the most challenging aspects to accept when responding to a disaster is how long term recovery differs from other forms of stress. Unfortunately, response to a pandemic also significantly differs from other forms of long term recovery, let alone other forms of stress. 

One of the major differences from other types of disasters is that a pandemic simultaneously effects to great degree numerous communities at once. Other types of disasters (i.e., tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, or mass attacks, for example) instead may effect one or a few communities at once. ​

USA TODAY

There can be positive aspects to the broad scope of pandemic impacts. For example, many people appreciate how we're all in this together, no matter what county, state, or even country you may be located. If you call a family member or coworker in another region, likely you have similar experiences to discuss. 

That said, the level of impact can feel overwhelming to many people. Here are some important practices to keep in mind as you proceed through stages of impact by pandemic: 

Pace and Nourish Yourself and the People Around You as You Go
This cannot be emphasized enough. The road ahead is a long one. There will be many needs to address, well beyond issues of quarantine and physical distancing. You will have greater ability to adapt and respond to what comes if you pace your response, do not over function, and incorporate healthy daily practices. You cannot solve the pandemic in a day, a week, or even a month. 

As you consider pacing and nourishing yourself and the people around you, in your homes, work, or neighborhood, consider what you have been putting off in the last few days since beginning to realize the gravity of the pandemic spread. Dinners with family or housemates? Smiling at people in your household or in your neighborhood on a regular basis? Taking time to move around, or to take a mental break from focusing on response to think about or enjoy something else for a little while? How many days will you be putting these things off? This week? Several weeks? The demands are not going to lift any time soon. And if you continue to put these important nourishing practices on hold, you inadvertently will prepare yourself for burnout. 

Gather Your Resources
What or who helps you personally and professionally? If you do not already know, now is a good time to figure this out, as you will need to draw on these practices, forms of support, or people throughout the weeks ahead. Having a current referral list is very helpful. There may also be certain supplies you regularly need in the weeks ahead. Take time to consider what those are and identify ways of obtaining them, if possible and necessary. 

Remember, A Step at a Time
Rather than focusing on the big picture, many people who survive, and even thrive, beyond significant adversity, reflect on how they did it by focusing on what they or the people around them needed next, more than everything that was needed. By focusing on the next step, gradually you create a step-by-step pathway forward. 

You can do this! And, your efforts are contagious. Thank you for the tremendous difference you are making. 

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In a recent conference call for faith-based leaders, I referenced a term I've used in many settings to describe the process of assimilating or moving through the affects of challenge we can experience in small or large ways throughout our daily living: metabolizing adversity. 

When I use this term, I am referring to the range of activities that have been proven to help a body process stress hormones. 

We experience stress hormones on a daily basis. They are not only related to crises or disasters. If we do not establish habits in our lives that help us regularly decrease those elevations by increasing our hormones related to self-agency and self-care, we are more likely to eventually develop diseases, including potentially heart disease, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, or cancer, as well as potential disorders, including high rates of anxiety, depression, or suicidal ideations. 

How best can you develop daily habits that help you metabolize adversity you experience?

• First, consider what actually nourishes you. What do you find most relieving, most relaxing, most refreshing, or most inspiring? Is it hard or easy to come up with answers to those questions? It's ok if you don't know right away. Take some time to consider it. Consider whether the activities that bring you relief or relax you are healthy, or have other byproducts that maybe harming you. Take some more time to consider what actually nourishes you.
  
• See if you can begin to incorporate some of those things, a little bit at a time, practicing each day so they can become habits.
  
• It can be relatively simple, like committing to having an extra glass or two of water each day. Or, committing to setting your alarm to take a brief stroll every hour, especially if you work many hours sitting down. Or, talking with someone you enjoy at the end of each day, between ending work and beginning your evening routine. Or, creating a new bedtime routine.
  
• See how you feel after trying some of these, daily, for at least a week. 

Sleep, regular movement, healthy meals and snacks, drinking water, interacting with people you care about and who care about you, and practicing your faith, are all ways proven to help you metabolizing stress or adversity you encounter.

You can practice these, and you can encourage the people in your households, work environments, and neighborhoods to practice them too. 

Help sustain online education by making a financial contribution today or becoming a monthly donor. Thank you for your generosity!

As ICTG donors, volunteers, and staff, have researched and explored most effective pathways for healing and thriving beyond adversity, we have found one essential practice for getting "prepared": practicing how you want to be in an emergency. You can have all the flip charts, exit strategies, and "stop, drop, & roll" mantras you want, but if you are prone to freezing, dissociating, or freaking out, you (and your group) won't be able to follow your well-laid plans and procedures. While it is important for everyone to consider the type of person they hope to be in an emergency, it is especially key for leaders of schools, businesses, nonprofits, and congregations to consider. Their leadership largely determines how their group will proceed, and the essence of their leadership is contagious. 

​Here are a few tips for becoming the person you hope to be in an emergency. Take some time to answer the following the questions: 

1. If an emergency, crisis, or disaster occurs, how do you see it best unfolding? For example, perhaps you hope your staff and constituents all have the information they need to make wise and quick choices. Or, your staff and constituents know and have access to the right contact person. Or, your staff and constituents know how to be in touch with one another and determine if everyone is out of harm's way. 

2. As you consider emergencies, crises, or disasters in the past, in terms of your organization at that time, what do you wish had gone better? Were key people absent or unavailable? Was it hard to communicate with one another, and if so, why? Was there misinformation, rumors, or other forms of frustration that inhibited help and care from happening? 

3. As you think of those past events, and what you wish may have gone better, recall your mind, body, and spirit in those hours and days. Become mindful of what you felt like. What did your muscles feel like? Were your thoughts racing or flowing with ease? Were you irritable? Irrational? Or easy to talk with? Did you feel nourished or fueled along the way, or did you find yourself realizing it had been hours since you had used a restroom, eaten, drank water, or slept? 

4. Right now, today, how are you practicing care for your mind, body, and spirit? This practice is most helpful if you are honest with yourself. For example, try drawing a Venn diagram. On the left side, write out what practices you, personally, find help you make it through. Not necessarily the things you should or ought to do. But the things that actually make you feel better, even just a little bit. Then, on the right side list the things that contribute to your long term health. These may or may not be the same things. Whenever they are the same things, put those things in the middle overlapping section. You may find that the things that help you feel some relief during crises are not necessarily things that contribute to your health long term. You also may find the left side more empty than the right side. That's ok for right now. Right now, it's best to be honest and get your real practices out in front of you. 
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5. If you found that the left side of your Venn diagram is more empty than the right side, or you found that not much overlap exists between the left and right sides of your diagram, take some time now to consider one or two practices from the right side that you feel you could practice today. For example, here are some things that people often put on the right side that you may choose from:

• Practicing minutes of quiet, meditation, or prayer daily
• Spending some time with at least one person who cares about me, and for whom I care for, daily
• Taking in a beautiful view of nature
• Forest bathing
• Taking a daily walk
• Practicing 30min of cardio activity
• Drinking at least 8 glasses of water a day
• Eating green vegetables daily
• Eating healthy proteins daily
• Stretching daily
• Reading inspiring prose, poetry, or Scripture
• Laughing
• Expressing gratitude
• Solving smaller or different problems or challenges

These are just some of many examples of daily or weekly practices that contribute to a person's long term health. While not all, many of these practices can go on regardless of external circumstances and even during days of responding to crises or disasters. Many people find that continuing these practices through times of emergency help them to re-member themselves or the group to which they belong, especially after feeling temporarily fragmented. 

6. In terms of leadership, what do you hope to model for your staff or constituents during times of emergency? If you hope to provide steady leadership that can withstand extreme pressures, what does that mean to you? What is the character of that leadership? What does it look like, specifically? Compare your answers to these questions to your answers to #2 and #3. Are there expressions of leadership that you can be practicing more today? 

During the height of an emergency, people often draw upon their muscle and involuntary memories before having access to their rational training. That is why it can be most helpful to practice being the kind of person you hope to be in an emergency in, what we at ICTG refer to as, "times of peace." Those times when you are not "amped up," "clenched," "freaking out," or "stressed." Perhaps, you are in circumstances which feel constantly stressful and unending. In those cases, you may have to be more intentional about carving out space to begin practicing the care you hope to extend to yourself and those around you. 

Your presence, as a leader, is contagious. We encourage you to take time to consider the presence you are offering to others, especially in times of upheaval. If you would like help doing so, please do not hesitate to reach out for more information. We'd be glad to hear from you. 
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Meanwhile, share your best tips in the comments below. What's worked well for you and your group? 

It's been said that tornadoes are like a giant knife coming through a community, leaving one side of a street pristine, while the other side is demolished. Tornadoes can remove the entire front facade of a home, while leaving the rest of the structure intact – as if it were a giant dolls house. It is not uncommon to find survivors gazing at paths of destruction, reaching out for miles, almost in awe of all that has happened – so quickly, so particularly, so difficult to process.

Like any disaster, the heartache that unfurls in the aftermath does not discriminate. It can cross every socioeconomic and cultural boundary. Still, those who already were vulnerable, can be especially hard put by the damage and repercussions. ​

In the first days and weeks of responding to a tornado, there are important things to keep in mind for community care and resiliency:

• Do not hinder or distract from search and rescue processes
• Those who have been less physically impacted have opportunities to support those who are more physically impacted by helping to clean up, sharing meals, and providing a shoulder to cry on
• Houses of worship can provide safe spaces for community members to find spiritual respite, refreshment, to sing, and to pray
• Pace and nourish yourself – this is not like other stresses and it will be a long road, both physically and spiritually
• Give gifts that help and don't hinder

If your organization is looking for additional resources for how to respond to tornado damage in the days and weeks ahead, we encourage you to explore the training materials we offer online or to reach out for a personal consultation. We are glad to hear from you! 

Remember, it's not just about washing hands
Washing hands is one of the number one ways to help stop the spread of viruses. That said, there are many ways to spread germs, and washing hands may not prevent illnesses from spreading. In the case where your community does become impacted, you may need to consider how your organization exercises its mission, especially whether you provide services, education, worship, or other forms of connection to your members or constituents who may become home-bound for some time.

Throughout our website you will find many resources for ways to support your constituents and we encourage you to explore them. Also, reach out if you have questions or would like additional guidance on getting prepared or responding. ​