Notice New People Entering Your Life?

I found this blog draft from May 8th, 2016 in the trash section of the blog dashboard. I wrote this blog years ago. Why would I have trashed it? Why wouldn't I leave it in the draft section like the other unfinished blogs I started and stopped? This looks like a complete blog....I restored it and immediately published it. I am reading it for the first in many years along with you-after I published it.

I don't know about you, but this new experience of noticing new people entering my life seems so counter-intuitive and against rational thought. And certaintly seems ironic for the way my family has chosen to deal with COVID-19-bunker down style. I mean think about it, we are in the midst of a pandemic and for those of us who are hardcore quarantining one would not expect to come into contact with another human especially a "stranger" for the foreseeable future!

When all of this started, Friday March 13th, to be exact, we spent months, I mean months, sheltering in place in total isolation. Even in the summer and still today we don't go to gatherings and social distance, we don't go out, we don't go to parties and the list continues. The bottom line is we don't have the opportunity to see anyone!

Even when I went back to work, I teach, I rarely see other teachers. We stay in our rooms and zoom each other for meetings. There is little to no interaction. To top that off I support grade level teams so I don't have a solid group if you will that I would socialize with at school. (The grade level teams usually hang together since I support 1st-6th I don't have a tribe at school.)

This is my second year teaching at my new school. I've been in the district for a decade and made such incredible friendships but I don't see those comforting and familiar faces anymore. True isolation sets in and intensely. I became forlorn and depressed, scared and anxious, alone, on the outside, an observer.

I get home and my friends from high school send group texts of get togethers, birthdays, girls days, New Year's plans and I have to decline and see pictures of their fun. I hope I have friends after this is over. My best friend, I consider her a sister, I cannot see. My kids are family with her kids. We all cry for them but we aren't visiting. We stay in the house or go outside.

So how is it that I could meet new people?

Because the universe has your back. INSERT NEW PERSON HERE

How can that be after all we've been through alone? Why am I meeting specific people now so easily? What role do they play in my growth right now? I know this is a phase won't last. It is a short burst so that I learn a lesson or grow in some way. That's how the universe works. There will soon be another long period of aloneness but I will have more tools and comfort because of this little gift the universe gave me. It's up to me to find the lesson. I must.