An open letter to parents and caregivers

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First of all, I have no advice. We are starting school in the throes of a pandemic. We have no recipe to follow. You don’t need a lecture from me.

What you really need is chocolate!

But since I am able to serve up only words to you, what I would offer is an invitation:

Feel all the feels.

That’s right. The beautiful and brutal — the brutiful. The ups and downs, the contradictions, multitudes and paradoxes. The “hues and blues in equal measure,” as singer-songwriter Alanis Morrisette put it.

The loneliness from not being alone.

The weariness from not getting things done.

The fear and love so close and heavy that it can hurt to breathe.

I invite you to feel all the feels, raw though they may be. After all, cooking begins with raw ingredients.

Then, I would offer two specific hopes.

Number one: I hope you have another adult in your life who will listen to you express your feelings with compassion and without judgment.

I’m as guilty as the next person of rushing to “fix things” for someone else, telling that person exactly what do as if I (in all my wisdom) know all the answers. Under the pretext of giving advice, that behavior is really self-serving. I’m uncomfortable that you are uncomfortable; and so, I want to change how you feel so that I feel better about myself.

Instead, I hope you have someone to bear witness to your story — not to try and change it into his or her own story. Someone who will sit down with you at a table. If that person were to bring chocolate, so much the better.

(Chocolate, by the way, qualifies as a vitamin in a pandemic. I should know. I personally know several doctors.)

My second hope is that, after sharing your feelings, you will look inward at yourself. The truth is that we cannot change this situation — now there is a larger life lesson! Coronavirus or not, there is much in the world that is beyond our control.

But if we give ourselves permission to feel our feelings and then share them openly and honestly, we can change our outlook — the way we see the world.

A friend (after first listening to my ranting and raving) shared an image with me of looking into the mirror and seeing a smudge. You could scrub and polish that mirror with every cleaning spray under your sink. Or, you could realize that the chocolate stain is actually on your own cheek! You could gently wash your face with some sweet-smelling soap. That’s not advice. It is an invitation to care for yourself. I hope you will, dear parent and caregiver.

You are doing the best you can. The problems are complex. The struggle is real.

So, for God’s sake, eat your chocolate vitamins! (Maybe I do have a bit of advice after all.)

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and author of Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems. He is currently working from home with his wife and three children.