I really hope you, the readers, are ok during this unprecedented time. Life has not stopped, but it has changed. To care for our families we have been requested to stay at home. For quite a few this is ok, but for some it is a scary time. For some they need social interaction with others, they live alone but work is their lifeline, for these life may be harder. For those adults with ASD who only believe things when they see it for themselves - how are they coping.
We are all in this together - but in very different ways to each other - because we are not all the same and we do not know who will be hit with the virus, we don't know who will survive or who will die. Some are excelling and finding free training courses to do, some are doing the jobs they have been putting off for years, some are learning new skills from YouTube videos. Quite a few are going into work everyday. But again there are many that are struggling financially and with their mental health.
I have been counselling those that are happy with online or phone, and believe me I admire my clients, they are wonderful and beautiful people, they are amazing. Between client sessions I have been studying, baking, gardening, painting and watching the birds in my garden. I have my two days a week with the NHS working from home, for which I am grateful that I can still talk to patients and give them that little bit of a lifefline and knowledge that they are being watched even from a distance. I have been keeping away from scare mongering and falsehoods that many are writing. I follow The Guardian newspaper and The New Scientist where to me they tell more truth than fallacy.
There is so much beauty outside our windows, there is more birdsong, less car noise, more children laughing from playing in their gardens. I hear of the care others are handing out to their neighbours.
Look around at nature - see how it grows again in the most inhospitable place - ferns growing from concrete - life carries on, maybe differently but life is what we make it we can chose to be hateful or we can chose to show kindness and compassion. I know what I chose and we all do have choice. Lets chose to be kind, to see the beauty that is around us and learn again to help nature restore itself as then it will restore us.
Person Centred Counsellor, Cornwall
