Last week, Erick and I made the call that I've been stressing about for a few weeks now. We decided to postpone the wedding we've been planning for months, the wedding we sent out invitations for just a week ago, the wedding I've been dreaming about for my whole life.
(Really - read this post to see how obsessed I used to be with weddings as a child)
Our wedding, just like that, pushed back. Not because of relationship problems or any "normal" reason someone pushes a wedding. Because of a completely unprecendented, global emergency.
I'm going to start this to take a second to feel sorry for myself. I don't want to spend much time there, because I know there are much worse problems to have right now. But I have to be vulnerable and say that this decision, while I know it was the right one, made me really sad.
Now, let me leave behind that moment of feeling sorry for myself and let's talk about what's going on to us as a whole.
We're all cancelling our weddings.
I've seen multiple post on my own social media feeds alone over the past few days, and I'm sure there are more to come.
We're all cancelling our weddings, our funerals, graduations, proms, family vacations, cruises, classes... Everything, just like that, is cancelled, postponed, or on-hold.
I'm working from home every day now. For the time being, there are no more lunches with co-workers, meetings (who thought I'd ever miss meetings), holiday celebrations, or even just interacting with other people during the day. And I count myself lucky to still have a job, when I know many people across the country are already suffering the negative consequences of this pandemic.
We're all going through the grief of losing something. We're all losing something. Many people are losing much, much more than that.
It's no one's fault. There's no one to blame. But we're all experiencing some loss.
I'm taking a moment here to feel sorry for all of us. If you're anything like me, you try to avoid hard feelings until you can't anymore. Let's try our best to not do that. Let's call this what it is, a loss, and let's grieve it together.
We're all going through this together.
Does that make it better?
I don't know, but for me it does.
I was on the phone with a friend recently and we were commiserating about working from home. I told her that part of the beauty of this particular moment is that I can call so many of my friends and know that they're all experiencing the same things.
We're all cancelling our weddings.
We're all scared. We're all worried. We're all trying (I HOPE) to do our best to stay home and protect each other. And while it doesn't make my sadness or grief any less real, it does make it a little more palatable, more manageable.
I've been posting on my Instagram account every day for a while now. Every day I've been trying to do yoga and share about it with my followers. The other night I cooked dinner on my stories. I've been trying to suggest tasks every day to make everyone feel less alone.
For me, through all of this, all the changes and grief and fear --- the biggest help is knowing I'm not alone. I'm not the only one who is afraid, many of us are. I'm not the only one who is grieving, many of us are. I'm not the only one who's feeling anxious, many of us are.
We are all cancelling weddings (and graduations and funerals and vacations and, and, and...)
And we are all, one day, going to be okay.
You are not alone.
If you're feeling alone, head over to my instagram account - @emilyamartinblog! That's not just a plug for myself (though it is), but I've really been doing my best to reach out to people that way. I'm posting daily challenges, hosting group yoga daily, and I'll be sharing more tips along the way. So, give me a follow if you haven't already.
If you're interested in joining my daily yoga sessions, send me a DM and I'll add you to my close friend's list, which is where I've started posting daily yoga. Join me there.
And to you, reading this, wherever you are (hopefully at home!!!). If you're feeling helpless, anxious, alone, afraid --- please know you are not the only one. We are all here with you, now. And we all need each other more than ever.
Until next time, friends.
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