“How Can I Live This Quarantine?”
Learning from those who hold wisdom
This coronavirus quarantine has been a deeply strange and traumatic experience. We weren’t made for this. We love our families, but being locked down is testing us to the edge of sanity. We love our children, but we can’t raise them alone. We like the option to work from home, but it’s hard to focus when so many worries lurk every moment. We are in a state of hypervigilance, which is deeply exhausting.
Our ancestors have been through this before. Anne Frank. Bombings. Plagues. Famines. Having to pull together to survive — enduring a period of contraction—is part of life. Any illness requires a retreat from normal life. A slowing down. A going deeper.
I love this advice from the indigenous grandmothers:
Grandma, how can I live this quarantine?
“My daughter, quarantine is a special, mysterious and sacred period. In my days, newborn children could only leave the house for the first time after their 40th day of life. It is a period of waiting and preparing for a new life. It is the period that produces a great change.”
And how do you prepare for this change?
“With simple, genuine and loving actions. Every morning comb your long hair with dedication and untie all the knots, even the most hidden ones that you have always neglected. It is time to put all the knots in the comb. Then dedicate yourself to untangling even your beloved ones skeins. With patience and you will try to find the end of the skein, the exact starting point of the thread. Already with these simple but powerful actions you will create order outside and inside of you. Undoing physical knots with your hands you will begin to touch your internal knots.”
And after undoing the knots, what can I do, grandma?
Remove all parts of you that are no longer fertile. In many funeral rites of ancient peoples it is believed that the deceased leaves the body entirely on the 40th day after his death. In these 40 days, my daughter, cut your hair, eliminate clothes that you have not worn for a long time or that you no longer want use, open the windows of your home well to let the stale air out, cultivate new thoughts by abandoning the old, dedicated to creating new habits, new customs, new traditions.”
Grandmother, I’m afraid that after this isolation nothing will change. Man quickly forgets…
“How others will react to this quarantine is none of your business. Make a commitment to change and not forget. Make sure this storm shakes you up so much that it completely revolutionizes your life.”
―Elena Bernabé, Indigenous Peoples Cultures. April, 2020
📸 raffaele montepaone
