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Surviving Uncertainty
THE PANDEMIC DIDN’T JUST CHANGE HOW WE LIVE: IT CHANGED WHO WE ARE.
BY HARRISON BERRY
Picking the right face mask, giving gracious space at the grocery store, joining a Zoom meeting—these are just a few of the skills that, suddenly in March of 2020, became indispensable for life during the pandemic.
Most people learned to keep their distance. That’s what Licensed Professional Clinical the screen and have a very mature conversation Counselor Lucy Edwards did, at least at first.
“I had to make the call to stop doing Stay Home orders continued, playgrounds telehealth,” she said. “I just made that sacrifice remained empty and online education kept because the need was so great.”
Edwards specializes in therapy for children. Her patients aren’t unique for weathering a severe public health crisis, but their problems illuminate the intimate ways COVID-19 has affected America, the State of Idaho and every person in the world.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little has touted slashing red tape around telehealth; but facing an increase in her workload and the needs of her clients, Edwards grew frustrated with the medium. The children she worked with had unmet social needs. Their grades and mental health suffered. In the summer of 2020, she started conducting physically distanced sessions in parks.
“Just having your face directly on the computer screen, for any kid, that’s a very direct way to communicate,” she said. “To have a teenager with anxiety put their face on the screen and have a very mature conversation was also very limiting.”
Stay Home orders continued, playgrounds remained empty and online education kept young people and adults indoors. But the police killing of George Floyd, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and a bitter national election held Americans’ gazes on the streets. Anxiety heightened in the world, in our homes and in our locked-down lives. Even traditional institutions were forced to adapt.
Anxiety heightened in the world, in our homes and in our locked-down lives.
For the last 21 years, the Ada Community Library has conducted a “big read” program, Treasure Valley Reads, that turned reading into a social event. Past titles have largely been American classics like A Farewell to Arms or recent books like The Orchid Thief. For 2021, recognizing that readers’ attitudes, sensitivities and attention spans had changed, organizers opted for a challenging collection of short stories sure to invoke contemporary concerns.
“There was something familiar about the tone of the subject matter, which is a sense of loneliness pierced with moments of light,” said ACL Branch Manager and Associate Director Molly Nota. “It felt like everything was spilling over in this book, and that’s where we’re at in this country.”
The New York Times describes the stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin as the kind that “a woman in a Tom Waits song might tell a man she’s just met during a long humid night spent drinking in a parking lot”—a book Nota said will start dialogue about race, language and who gets to tell what stories.
Normally, TVR would partner with The Cabin’s Readings & Conversations series or Storyfort, and incorporate in-person events and author visits. Berlin’s death in 2004 and the fragmented nature of her collection were fitting circumstances for a distracted, socially conscious and homebound readership.
“We chose it because it’s going to be really hard to keep people engaged in one novel. Believe it or not, people have a lot on their minds right now,” Nota said.
Even the purveyors of peace of mind have struggled. In a video released in July, Sage Yoga Owner Marisa Radha Weppner announced that the popular studio would close because of difficulty making rent amid a public health crisis.
A stressed Boise had lost one of its favorite places to decompress.
“I feel worried about what we are setting ourselves up for, or conditioning ourselves unconsciously,” Weppner said. “We’re going to find ourselves in a new way of being... because of this collective trauma that we’re going through.”
Fear, isolation and long-term stress were acute problems before the pandemic, and Weppner had treated them through yoga and other practices for 20 years. Just as the doors closed on Sage, she began taking others on a new inward journey– ketamine-assisted therapy.
In November of 2019, she began working with Boise Ketamine Clinic, holding group sessions in July, August, September and October of 2020. She aims to augment therapies and offer guided experiences, moderating set and setting, incorporating music and inducing a reflective state.
But private treatments like ketamine therapy are expensive— more expensive than yoga or meditation, both of which have become popular online. Amid collective angst and trauma, familiar tools for relaxation and healing became more accessible than ever.
“One of the benefits is that teachers like ourselves...we’ve been forced to go online,” Weppner said. “You really have access to everybody. Everybody’s leading meditation right now. Meditation is like a fad, it’s hotter than it’s ever been.”
