LJs Free Online Shopping

A few weeks ago I started adding the phrase, "with Corona on top" when talking about hard things. Anything challenging--- sickness, unemployment, divorce, depression-- are all so much harder "with Corona on top." It was meant to be kind of funny, a nod to how much we endure, a testament to our collective resilience.  And then the fires came and I stopped using that phrase. I had no words for this new experience. "__________ with Corona and unbreathable air on top" wasn't funny or clever. It was just painful.

So, like I do when I am at a loss for how I feel, I wrote. I imagined becoming like an enormous stand-alone bellows, pulling in all my strength and patience, tapping my reserves, harnessing it all, and then infusing that strength and patience into my little world, revitalizing myself and my family. And it worked. I felt better, more stable, like I could, even though I thought I couldn't, ride this new topping in my life. I wouldn't fall into the hole of despair. I would keep on going. 

But despite best laid plans, into despair I did indeed fall. On Friday my friend Jamie and I had made a plan to take our daughters hiking. It was the last day before school started full-time and we wanted to get into nature and reconnect with ourselves and each other. And, since we can't be inside together, these outdoor excursions are one of the important ways we can facilitate social time for our kids. But the smoke was too bad and we couldn't hike. And we couldn't hunker down in one of our houses and watch a movie. We abandoned the idea of spending the day together and I sat in my boat of despair, moaning and whining all morning long. 

Then we got the idea to meet at the Goodwill Bins. This is the thing my daughter Lucia will always say yes to, even if it means going with her weird mother. So we met at the bins, spent a socially distanced hour, then returned home where we double-washed all our clothes. That night we had a Zoom fashion show where we tried on all of our items. We laughed and laughed.  I was surprised by how spontaneously the day turned from miserable to magnificent.

Each time Lucia and I go to the Bins the agreement is that we will unload some of the clothes in our closets to make room for these new treasures. I have a lot of treasures and it didn't feel right to just send them back to Goodwill so I came up with the idea of creating an online platform to offer these items to my friends (and their friends) for free. Lucia set me up an Instagram account. Jamie quickly and enthusiastically joined the project and LJsfreeonlineshopping was born. I spent hours over the weekend in my little basement office posting items and funny descriptions. I made special LJs labels and packaged each "sold" item. Then I delivered the items to friends who'd claimed these treasures. 

One definition of resilience is "the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy." These days of quarantine, social distancing, radically changed daily habits and patterns topped with imminent threat to our environment and to so many lives in our region, have charged us all with the task of digging deeper, finding ways to be okay in the midst of all of it. We are being called to be SUPER RESILIENT.

At the beginning of that Friday when Jamie and I recognized that we couldn't go hiking and we couldn't watch a movie together, I was in despair. I was angry and bitter and resentful. I let myself go there.  But some little part of me knew that I couldn't stay there. I had to find a crack of light in that dark box. And I did. I see this happening all around me, everyday. People are figuring this out, each in their own way.  And, with each experience of one of us finding a glimmer of light, even just a little bit, even for a moment, our collective resilience is being fortified. When you are in the despair, as we all are sometimes, it's okay to let yourself be there. You're not alone and you won't be there forever.