Mother Earth is not panicked by the Coronoavirus.

This afternoon, after a long day of quarantine-prep + business-owning-hustling and checking in with people I love, I checked in with myself.

I put myself on a grassy piece of ground + let my body sink into that earth.

I listened to the birds chirp + the wind blow through the trees.
The abundance and beauty of nature had me in tears of gratitude and wonder.

I have always looked to Pachamama, Mother Nature, as a guide and a source in “uncertain times”.

I was humored by her message.

Mother Earth is not panicked by anything called Coronavirus. To her, this is all one big ecosystem. One that many living creatures are a part of. The humbling reminder that human beings are only a piece of that larger system.

I am humored by this reminder — because on one end, I want things to be significant. I don’t want to make light of the loss, of the tragedy, of the struggle, of the fear, that so many of my fellow human species are experiencing (including, myself, in many moments.)

But I also get it.

It isn’t only about us.

And if we perhaps remembered that message, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. (Or maybe, we would — and it just would *feel* different.)

I have received many lessons throughout this recent process of self-quarantine. These may be generalizations — aka they may not all apply to you — but in my own little orbit, from where I see the world, I am noticing:

* We are so reliant on systems and structures that have removed us and separated us from nature. Because many of us have lost the skills of growing our own food, we are rushing and scrambling into grocery stores, fighting for resources that are naturally abundant.

* The family unit, the home, has become so fragmented. Many of us live far distances from our parents, our children, our siblings, our grandparents. In times like this, I desperately wish I could live with all of the people I care about on a large plot of land so that we could quarantine together.

* There is a strong pull towards information available outside of ourselves — and less so towards the information sitting within ourselves. Our capacity to listen internally first and foremost can be a great asset at this time.

All in all, none of these messages are * NEW *. I’ve felt the truth in them for so many years — but somehow, this truth felt more like a theory, a memory, or a fantasy.

I am feeling the wake-up call, as I know many of you are experiencing as well.

There will be some of us — many of us, maybe — who will return to life as usual when this scare is done. It will live on as a point in time that we reference, like we do with 9/11, or the first moon landing. “I remember where I was when….”

There will be others — many of us, I hope — who will never be the same. Who will take this experience as a wake-up call, a door opening to a portal of a new beginning, a new life, that we had always wished for but thought we didn’t deserve.

In the end, I return to gratitude. For this message, for this moment, for my health, for the health of those I love, for the resources available to us, for the community that surrounds us, and most importantly, for this living breathing ever evolving home. Pachamama, our home.