i've been coming into this thread and reading what everyone has been sharing, and i really do appreciate y'all and i am inspired by y'all...your honesty and sincerity, your caring and patience, your strength and resilience, your trust and compassion...SLAP has a lot of highs and lows, and this thread is truly one of its high bright places.
you know, i'm pretty far along in life--i'll be 50 this month--and in a fairly solid place in life...emotionally, spiritually, and--for what it is worth--economically...the latter of which does not matter a lot, really, and it seems silly mentioning it, but life experience has taught me that it makes a difference...in retrospect, a lot of what i have dealt with when i was younger was compounded by poverty, so i don't want to be dismissive about material circumstances, and how they can make bad situations worse.
we did lose my mom to Covid this past October, and i caught it when i was taking care of her (before we had to get her into the hospital) and had a minor to moderate bout with it...i never thought i was going to need to go to the hospital myself, but it was the sickest i've ever been. i was teaching 3 different classes at 2 different universities through all of this, while getting sicker and having to make this call to the hospital every day, knowing that there would not be good news--she was 77 and had diabetes, so it really was brutal to her...at one point her lungs collapsed, at another point her kidneys failed. truly the hardest two weeks of my life, and i know i am still dealing with some kind of--dare i say--PTSD from it.
i did ultimately have to have 2 of my classes assigned to another instructor unfortunately, but the English department at that university really had my back, i'm grateful to say. as a literature and writing professor (adjunct), teaching through Zoom has not been as bad as i thought it was going to be when the pandemic really started changing things--and i deal with students' tears at least once a semester in a "normal" semester--but since the pandemic changed our lives, i have had a number of students break down weeping during conferences and office hours, and i've done my best to make sure they know that they are not alone, and i've done everything i can to be as flexible as possible with work and due dates and all, but it has been an emotionally trying time just trying to maintain my own emotional well being when i feel so powerless to help some of my students in these moments....thank god for a little Maker's Mark at the ends of those days.
still, things could be worse and i'm grateful and i'm especially concerned with counting my blessings on the daily, and never taking anyone or anything for granted. one of the biggest challenges since my mom passed, is i have a younger sister (in her late 40s) who is developmentally disabled (and i believe autistic, although they didn't really look for that when she was younger), she has lived with my mom her entire life, in mom's house her entire life, and has not worked in almost 20 years, and she is now my responsibility...i love her, she is quite innocent, but i also feel quite overwhelmed too at times.
ok, thank-you for taking the time to listen/read if you did...i just figured since i have been coming in here and reading what people have been sharing, i'd share myself, and i'm sure i'm leaving plenty out.
y'all are inspiring and i hope and pray for the best for ya'll...