The big picture is all about the tiny details

This week I had the pleasure of gathering with others to share stories from our experience of pandemic lockdown life, on the fifth anniversary of lockdown beginning. It was life-giving to listen to each other’s stories.

One of the ways I coped with lockdown life was by basically pretending I was an anthropologist and documenting everything I could about the time in writing. It helped me immensely to pour all my thoughts and feelings and observations into a judgment-free document. Just getting it out of my brain and body and onto my keyboard was cathartic and took some of the edge off the intensity of that time, enabling me to keep going as an introverted parent of a one-year-old trapped at home with a partner who was working from living room, while also trying to stay connected as much as possible in a time when we weren’t supposed to get together, particularly trying to stay connected with my dad who was suffering from Alzheimer’s and I was losing more of each month. Zoom is a gift, but it can only do so much.

Documenting your life is powerful. It is a way of witnessing your own life, of taking in the full scope of it, even if you are just focusing on one tiny part. It’s the tiny details that illuminate the big picture of it all.

Witnessing your life lets you FEEL your life, not just feel run over by your life.

Witnessing your life is one way to create art from your life.  

Last week my collection of mini-memoir, The ABC’s of Pandemic Parenting, came out in paperback. This book was my effort to make sense of that difficult moment in time, and to make art from it. The paperback version includes a new guide to how to witness YOUR life, today. In these big days witnessing your life can be a way through, a way to find space for yourself in a crowded world.

May you feel how big your life is in the tiny details of it,

Christin

 P.S. You can pick up your copy of The ABC’s of Pandemic Parenting at Green Apple Books in San Francisco, on Amazon, or at Lulu.com.