Blooming in The "New Normal"

Spring brings rejuvenation. I’m always amazed when suddenly the sun feels warmer, the days are longer, a few birds start to chirp out the window, small signs of green start to take hold at the bottom of darkened plants, and the laughter of kids playing outside starts to fill the streets. Slowly but surely, it starts to look different. It starts to sound different. It starts to feel different.

Spring represents so much: rebirth of life, a signification that time continues to move, and we continue to go on; a recalibration of what has lived and what can no longer come back from the colder, darker Winter.

This year feels even more significant – as the vaccines make rounds in the United States, a new feeling of hope emerges. News channels, once filled with the darkness of COVID-19 rising cases and death rates begin to shift slowly, to be filled with the light of vaccination charts and efficacy rates. According to the CDC, we are not “out of the woods” just yet, but I can feel the warmth of hope that this year may bring.

As we think about what returning to the “new normal” looks like for us all – it’s worth thinking about how the season has changed us. Just like a new bloom in the Spring, we are sprouting new leaves – built on the same foundation with the same roots, but forever changed by this season of loss and adaptation. We have lost some things that will never come back, and we have also gained new things, unique to each of us, that we may choose to foster and grow. Or perhaps, there was always something there under the surface, that just needed the right elements to thrive.

How will you bloom this Spring?

Jenni Burton

April, 2021