We are now about a month in to lockdown in the UK. There are talks of what will happen after but nothing solid and the talk is about a “new normal”. 

I’ve been listening to a few podcasts about how people are coping in the lockdown. One to listen to is Financial Times’ Culture Call podcast episode with chef Sumin Nurat. Sumin Nurat is the Author of Salt Fat Acid Heat which is a Netflix mini series and a book about cooking. I loved her honest and real clips of life that she shared and she made cooking a pasta sauce from scratch sound easy and appealing! 

I’ve started a 30 day series with my sister called Power Body Love by Women’s Health. It includes 30 days worth of clips around 5 mins long. We listen to one a day and I try to have a notebook to hand to jot down any thoughts or tips. The clips are about positive body image and crashing the negative associations and emotions that people have with and about their bodies built up by social influences. 

Listening to podcasts and finding new topics of interest, spending time talking on the phone with my sister about these topics and writing down my thoughts about them are all things I didn’t have time to do. I didn’t even have time to think that I don’t have the time to do them and so I didn’t even know I wanted to do them. There are a few things like walks in the park with my family, doing baby sensory classes with Sofia, baking and talking to my Grandma about that I enjoy but didn’t think about before lockdown.

I have felt a shift in my outlook and find that I am fulfilled and have purpose to each day. I have a structure which mainly forms around Sofia’s needs. As a family we have an open dialogue about what everybody needs. We are multiple people and we all have different needs which are important and we have found it successful to voice those needs so that we can adapt.

The new normal (for now) is starting to become enjoyable because we are doing it consciously and in a dynamic way, we are not getting set in our ways or repeating mundane tasks everyday but running with fluidity within a healthy structure. The timetable is important, it is also important to keep checking in, reviewing what works and changing what doesn’t.

#newnormal #familygoals #communicationiskey #review #adapt #checkin #liveconciously