Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.
-Barbara de Angelis
I have to say, this summer vacation was not at all what I had envisioned for 2020 for my family. Our original plans were a two-week family vacation to new and exciting places, as well as visits with family and friends, and a weeklong conference on perinatal mental health (my counseling specialization) for me. Reality ended up being me taking a week off of work to relax at home, spend time with family, follow up on doctor visits, catch up on my favorite shows, read and grieve the loss of our planned family adventure. I’m glad I took the week off to recharge and take care of my own mental wellness, but at times I felt quite bored and restless, as we were not out and about doing our “normal” family activities.
This week off definitely helped me better understand how my kids have been feeling this summer, as they have not done any of their normal summer time activities. This time off really helped me understand firsthand the amount of boredom and restlessness that’s been present this summer for them. It helped me empathize and validate this for them, and I definitely get it now.
This time together also gave us an opportunity to grieve the loss of the cancelled trip that we’d all been looking forward to for months on end. Who would have thought that back in February when we renewed our passports that our trip would be cancelled because of a pandemic? Ironically, our new passports also arrived this week, months after they were supposed to be here. Anyway, we’re hoping to bump our trip forward a year to give us something to look forward to in the summer of 2021(and in hopes that next summer will be more normal than this one).
All this does make me feel a little sad as there were lots of things we wanted to do with our oldest before she out of the house in a few years from now, things that are just not possible right now. But, all in all, I’d say staycation 2020 was a success! We got to spend time together as a family, sleep in, talk, tell funny stories, laugh, eat vacation food, etc. That being said, I’m greatly looking forward to getting back to work and seeing clients again next week, and adding a bit of normalcy back into my life during this very abnormal time.
