Nostalgia in the Making

My phone keeps sending me memories of this time last year.

🤍 Arms wrapped around friends in photos, faces touching, shoulders leaning in
🤍 Family squished around a dinner table
🤍 Noisy, crowded, buzzing venues
🤍 Date nights in dimly lit restaurants

Distant relics of a very different life.

Looking at these photos, these moments captured in time without the full context of their impending reality, it's hard not to see them and wish I could whisper to myself in the photo "hug them a little tighter, it might be a while" or "don't leave early tonight, bedtime can wait and you won't hear your sister sing at a live venue for some time".

When these photo memories pop up I'm noticing they're accompanied by thoughts like "had I known then, I would have ..."

I know this line of thinking is normal and can be applied to so many situations that involve feeling grief, but it isn't the most helpful for me because pandemic or not, we have never had the gift of knowing then what we know now. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

Each new day that we wake up with breath in our lungs and warm blood in our veins holds the potential for moments captured in time to be looked back on. A bittersweet "before" to be savoured, nostalgia in the making.

While I think it's important for me to acknowledge the feels and grief that come with reminders of "before", I don't want to be fully consumed by it. Letting myself feel these moments of sadness (without minimizing them or telling myself how much worse it could be) along with grounding myself in the present mostly through mindfulness practices, breathwork, walks, and journalling has been helpful for me as we approach the one year marker of all this *gestures broadly*.

✍🏿✍🏾✍🏽✍🏼✍🏻 Community: What helps you stay present and grounded?