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It is now mid-May, 2021, less than a year and a half since the earliest reported cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. Seventeen months and a lifetime ago, who could have imagined the devastation, the disruption, the once unfathomable threat to life as we know it?
The tragedy of COVID has, to date, caused more than 3.5 million deaths worldwide, and delivered a newly expanded universe of grief for individuals, families and communities across the globe. No one has been untouched by this human catastrophe—a crisis whose solution posed a crisis itself: Stay safe by staying apart.
As nations shut down, at times we did too. How else to manage the cruel isolation, saturated for so many with sorrow and fear? Trauma is seared in our memories: ICUs and ERs on the brink of collapse, illness and death seemingly everywhere. All compounded by the staggering and deliberate betrayal by leaders whose knowing bad faith resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
And then, May 25th, the killing of George Floyd. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds of murderous video finally penetrated our country’s longstanding dissociation around the ongoing and brutal oppression of people of color. While the pandemic raged, so too did our cities and towns. Across the nation and around the world, people took to the streets to declare that Black Lives Matter. Seemingly overnight, the country awakened—horrified and outraged—to a new day of reckoning.
Meanwhile, climate change continued to rampage. 2020, the hottest year on record, saw massive wildfires, flooding and drought, and the most active hurricane season ever. In the midst of a global pandemic, we despaired for our traumatized planet—home to its traumatized people.
And yet, hope endured. The power of connection to loved ones and friends, patients, students, and our professional communities—miraculously facilitated by video platforms that arrived just in time—gave us comfort and strength. The courage of frontline and essential workers