On Monday, a crazy windstorm ripped through Massachusetts, felling trees and resulting in a mid-afternoon power outage in my neighborhood. I was in the middle of leading a meeting for a new (rather large and important) client when the Internet (and my Zoom meeting) died. I freaked out briefly, then scrambled to locate the phone dial-in and resumed the meeting. Despite the circumstances, I felt that I kicked ass during this meeting.
A couple of hours later, it was getting dark and the estimates from National Grid were that the power wouldn't return until around 10pm. Normally, I'm someone who jumps into action mode. Instead, I sunk into a complete and utter despair spiral. If you read my last newsletter ("Cells") you may remember that I have some racial trigger issues around pandemic grocery shopping. And I had just made one of said triggering pandemic grocery shopping runs a few days prior, so the the idea of the entire contents of our fridge spoiling (OMG food waste + an earlier-than-anticipated triggering grocery store trip to replace everything) made me lose my shit.
It was not my finest moment.
As I walked in circles trying to quell my panic and guilt over being so useless, I watched in awe and with gratitude as my husband jumped into action to solve problems (Jon is most definitely the guy you want to have on Team Apocalypse) and my kids squealed in delight over eating by candlelight and assembling an epic fort (which is still up and that they have slept in all week). Over the next couple of days as I retold the story of the power outage—both electrical and emotional—I realized that part of recovering from an outage of any kind involves grace for your not-so-fine moments, faith that you will get moving again, and gratitude for those around you (like my husband and kids) who can hold up the energy and forward momentum when you can't hold yourself up.
Be kind to yourself when you experience your next outage. You will surely have an opportunity to be the person who kicks ass in the future.
