Hitting the Pause Button

It’s been quite a while since you have heard from us. We have all had to adjust and respond to the medical emergency we face in our communities, states, countries, and the world. We have all had to hit the pause button on what was our daily life. While we all may feel differently about the pandemic, and be struggling with it in different ways, we are the same in that we are still people, trying to carry on while on pause.

By Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs

It’s been quite a while since you have heard from us. We have all had to adjust and respond to the medical emergency we face in our communities, states, countries, and the world. We have all had to hit the pause button on what was our daily life. While we all may feel differently about the pandemic, and be struggling with it in different ways, we are the same in that we are still people, trying to carry on while on pause. Work is on pause for some and school for others. Social interactions are paused for those who do not have access technology, especially for the elderly. For others, we have learned new ways to virtually socialize.

We speak a lot about anxiety – how it manifests and how to manage it. As the crisis hit the play button so quickly, we had to pause our blog. We had to freeze to catch our breath. Then we had to figure out how to build a virtual place for the children, teens, and young adults we support for our social skills centers. We might feel as anxious as the rest of the world but we also know that we can help those need us the most. We are able to coach others on how to build resiliency because of our training and our own resilient natures. While we have temporarily paused use of our physical spaces, we are still helping with friendship skills and resiliency and have hit “play” again in virtual ways.

None of us are sure what the next weeks and months are going to bring. However, we are sure that we will need to continue to use coping and resilience skills, as will everyone. We have reserves in our tanks and we can share our skills with you.

As we hit “unpause” for our blogs and books, we keep all our readers close in our hearts. Friendship isn’t paused. Kindness isn’t paused. Love isn’t paused. They are very much still at play.

Note: Donna and Nadine are both running online social skills, resiliency groups, parent support programs, and professional development workshops. We are here for you.