This is a three part blog series from Survivor “Anonymous.” In this series, Anonymous shares her reflections on what she is learning about herself, her community, and her world during this season of living through COVD-19 and a global pandemic. You can read Part 1 here.
WHAT I AM LEARNING ABOUT COMMUNITY.
Grief is universal, grief has memory, and grief is intersectional: COVID has brought with it grief for many individuals in my community. This pandemic has brought with it not only death, but also the loss of resources, security, connection and personal agency. It can further be compounded by the previous experiences and traumas individuals and groups have faced, and I have learned that my community as one organism can be fearful and cruel but also kind and powerful.
As COVID news was amplified, I saw individuals pushing themselves to the front of crowds to get groceries before others had the opportunity. I heard about individuals taking toilet paper out of other carts and intentionally blocking others from products. I heard discriminatory remarks and accounts of individuals preventing differently-abled humans from accessing resources that are crucial to their survival.
Conversely, I saw people learning how to love each other through social distancing and virtual platforms. Most reassuringly, I have witnessed a collective resiliency (there is that word again), an imperfect but meaningful shift from individualistic survival and into a place of coming together amidst the chaos to adapt and support each other.
I have witnessed a collective resiliency (there is that word again), an imperfect but meaningful shift from individualistic survival and into a place of coming together amidst the chaos to adapt and support each other.
Access to a community is a key component to getting through this whole COVID thing. While we all may share similarities in physical experiences, our stories and their impacts are unique and profoundly nuanced, and thus the experience of COVID will also be unique. I find myself in a privileged place where I have access to post-secondary education, support from the government, and access to therapy, and I know that this is not the case for every survivor. Some of us are struggling financially, some of us are entirely isolated, some of us have too much time to think (too much time to get stuck in memories), and some of us don't have safe outlets for connection. Some of us are doing okay, and some of us need extra kindness and support. Some of us have the ability to see further than the direct impacts of COVID, and others have the ability to identify the good things that may be coming in the future because of it. These differences are precisely why communities are relevant – they offer critical hope by allowing us to arrive at the table (even the virtual one) exactly as we are and providing not only an outlet but the sharing of the collective burden. It is when the person with hope for the future says: "You don't need to carry this worry about how things will turn out - all you need to focus on is the next right thing – and today I will hold the hope that we are moving in the right direction for you." And when that hopeful person becomes tired or doubtful, someone else then offers to hold hope for a while.
Some of us are doing okay, and some of us need extra kindness and support.
Communities have the potential to allow us to release stress and fear as well as to teach us how to hold hope for others. A group of strong and powerful women, other survivors - some of whom I met at a safe-house eight years ago - are an example of this. We laugh, we read books, watch movies, unpack things that are going on in our lives and then we laugh again. The simple act of interacting with individuals who share similar experiences - those who don't need to imagine what it must have been like, those who can see me as a human outside of those experiences - provides relief.***
Thank you kindly for taking the time to read these posts.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
***This is in reference to Restorations’ Peer Support Group. You can read more about our activities with survivors here.
Check back tomorrow for the next part of this reflection, “What I am learning about the world.”
Note: Restorations recognizes the importance of financially compensating survivors for their time, energy, and expertise and, as such, we financially compensate all survivors who contribute written pieces for the blog. We strongly believe in the necessity of financial compensation for this work, and we urge other organizations who request survivors to speak, write, or consult for their organization to do likewise for the following reasons:
to demonstrate a commitment to honour and respect survivors’ time, energy, and expertise;
to demonstrate an appreciation for the emotional, mental, and physical energy necessary to share their experiences with us in order to benefit others;
and to demonstrate a commitment to developing the economic independence of survivors.
