Category Archives: Human Health

A Look Back on 2020: What I Learned

I could probably write a book on this subject. I generally don’t think we talk enough about the positive things that come from tragedy and disaster. It’s probably why our culture is so fearful and morbid about death or why we are always suffering from “never enough” syndrome. I’m not a psychologist, just an internet expert, so don’t take my word for it – I’m just over here, speculating. That said here is my (not quite complete, but who has time to read these days) list of positive lessons I learned from the pandemic.

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A Look Back on 2020: Enter the Lockdown

I have been thinking a lot lately about our life during the pandemic, partly as it has come up in conversation a lot with friends. This is a blog and not a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers. I would need months to dive deep into the literature we have compiled on the “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic response, so this will not be that. Rather, I’d like to share some lessons-learned and thoughts on the pandemic that I have heard amongst my group of friends and within my family unit.

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Regenerating Life and Love: The People

I am going to pivot a bit on this one – bail on the format I was previously using (see my first three in the Regenerating Life and Love series: Intro, the Environment, and Animals and Fungi). When it comes to Mount St Helens, it is true that tourism, the logging industry, and other human activities have resumed in the area, but I am not certain how I feel about some of our resilience in the aftermath of this particular catastrophic event. When we speak about systems in nature regenerating life, we often look at them in terms of returning, recovering, and perhaps even overcoming (a forest fire might open up coniferous seeds to yield new forests or a species returning to spawning areas after an oil spill). We like things we can measure and track over time. Useful as that might be, it tends to also ignore the grey spaces of regeneration and healing. And for the human factor, this might be the most important bit.

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The Disposable Society and My Current Rage

I am taking a pause this week from my Regenerating Life and Love posts to rage. There are so many things happening in my country right now. Depending on your ideologies, they might be horrifying or exciting. I’ve tried multiple times to bring myself into a space of understanding and contemplation, but I am struggling. What I am witnessing is, for me, horrifying.

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