By Yourself and Never Alone Amidst COVID-19
Excerpts of my personal experience and journey navigating COVID-19, which includes job transitions, mental health, a parent getting COVID, moving, creativity and the creation of MuzicRX. All in 2020.
On March 3rd I moved back to Austin to start working for South by Southwest (SXSW) and on March 7th, sitting in the SXSW building off Lavaca and 14th, I was let go from SXSW due to the cancelation of this massive event as a result of COVID-19.
Early/Mid-March 2020 — Here’s an inside look at where I was and 19 things I was noticing as COVID-19 was swooping in.
March 23, 2020 — Journal Entry
*This piece has been edited for clarification. However, the main content and message has not changed.
I’ve been in transition and navigating change over the last couple years since leaving a job and going through a knee surgery and healing. This was before COVID and I guess I was preparing myself for the times we are in. Change, the only constant in life. Struck by an event beyond mine or any other human’s control.
Today I felt an urgency, and so I stayed in bed until 11:11 am. The pressures to create are real and loud, very loud.
Noticing the fear that holds me back, “What do you have to offer? You don’t really have anything to share.”
I’m feeling grief today. I feel the loss of freedom. The freedom that comes from financial freedom. I feel grief in the fact that my family is all spread out. I feel grief in the understanding of my identity, because who am I really? The attachment of who I am to the things which I do in the world.
How do we, as a culture, connect purpose with doing? We live in this productivity-driven, motivated by getting things done, crossing things off our to-do list society. Where does purpose meet business?
The time you share with loved ones, the meals you cook, the hands you hold and the smiles you share might bring us back to purpose. To limit human interaction is a weird, weird thing and I’m curious about the effects this will have for days, months, years and generations ahead.
Shifts in our global interactions are taking place.
Health and wellbeing, politics, finance, technology, relationships with loved ones, dating.
I’m very sleepy right now and want to curl into a ball on my bed at my friend’s house where I’m staying. What will things look like in just one month? Where is this whole experience taking humanity? Where am I going?
Last night I sat swiping for a very long time on a dating app. I matched with too many men considering I probably won’t actually meet any of them.
I feel tenderness right now, a rawness that’s open and here. I am comparing my life to others, it feels empty. Friends with family homes to retreat to, friends with partners who are quarantining and even friends with young children to take care of. My comparisons bring up my desire for a life partner.
It’s hard sometimes to show up and embrace life. Right now things feel uncertain and the view, extra blurry.
How does one move through self doubt? Noticing the doubt and acting anyway. As opportunities present themselves where do I hold back out of fear? And where do I show up authentically? How do I move through challenges?
What’s been occupying my time, is my reality.
One of my 2020 highlights amidst COVID-19 was an Author Support Group hosted by my friend, Adam Smiley Poswolsky. Smiley is a millennial workplace expert, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough, The Breakthrough Speaker, and his third book, Friendship in the Age of Loneliness, which will be published in May 2021. I’m sure we can all relate to his latest book for sure! This writing group connected over 65 authors from around the world and gave me a sense of community and purpose after I had lost my seasonal work with SXSW because of the pandemic.
The city of Austin was shut down and deep uncertainty lied within, and COVID was the thing everywhere, yet still over there, until it wasn’t anymore. I was wearing masks, distancing, barely going out. I was taking all precautions and I knew of one friend’s sibling who had gotten sick with COVID and then recovered. Phone notifications kept me informed with minimal television news in the background until one day, I received contact from my brother that dad was really sick. Thanks to two amazing friends, one a nurse, the other a doctor, we got dad a pulse oximeter and that saved his life by getting him to the hospital.
Father’s Day, June 21, 2020- My dad was admitted into the emergency room and tested positive for COVID.
“To see these children demonstrate their strength and their fortitude, because you don’t fight this by yourself. It takes a village. It takes a community, it takes a family and that’s what we have to do… just put on a mask. We want to get our community and market back together and we have to do it in a cooperative way.”
-Dad
Read more about how I survived my dad fighting COVID, and resources I leaned on.
With a loved one sick, and the uncertainty of the pandemic, I moved back to Houston to be closer to my family. I was glad to have been living in a city with access to nature for the first 5 months of the pandemic, and now, I would have to find the portal into nature while living in the concrete jungle of Houston, TX. Nature is one of my greatest medicines and portals of release and the thought of returning to Houston, during a pandemic was anxiety provoking to say the least. On the other hand, not returning to be close to my dad and family, was not seeming like a viable option either. So, after spending three weeks in Houston for what I thought would be a three day trip, I drove up to Austin, packed my things and returned to Houston.
Music for Healing and the Creation of MuzicRX-
Here’s some information about the virtual concerts that started when my dad was hospitalized the second time, and what we are doing now.
As quoted in this article and newsclip about how we supported dad’s mental health, “Baylor College of Medicine’s Dr. Asim Shah said, ‘this type of support is crucial to a person’s mental health, which is a key component of healing. ‘If you have good mental health. Your stress level is down, your immunity increases,’ said Shah. ‘COVID has a lot of impact when it comes to fear, when it comes to panic, and when it comes to depression.’ Shah said this type of support goes beyond those battling the virus. He said the need for social distancing may leave many people feeling touch deprived or touch starved.”
What started as virtual concerts in response to dad using meditation and music recordings in the hospital to keep himself company late at night while he waited for his treatments has turned into MuzicRX, a space for live, virtual concerts with musicians and community to support mental health and wellbeing. These concerts are for everyone, because we can all use positivity and support for our mental states.
Shah continued, “Human beings are made to touch each other. Now, because of COVID-19, we are not shaking hands, we are not hugging each other. That touch sensation is not happening,” said Shah. “We need to have some social interaction. We cannot be completely socially distant because that’s going to be extremely depressing… digital interactions like the ones the Weisfelds used to stay in touch with their father can help replace that lack of physical interaction.”
My father, Sheldon Weisfeld, was hospitalized twice from COVID for a total of 21 days with no visitors allowed. The road to recovery was long and the first news article can be read here. The first hospitalization was June 21, on Father’s Day where he was in the hospital until July 2. He returned home and then on July 6 returned to the hospital with a collapsed lung as a result of COVID and was there until July 14 when he was discharged a second time. Read the second news segment here.
Our first Zoom music as medicine concert was July 7 with five people on Facetime where my dear friend and musician, Phill Brush played some tunes. We proceeded to have a concert for 18 nights straight, which kept dad company while he then had to quarantine at home. The response from musicians who’ve participated with us has been inspiring and gracious. Many of the musicians came through word of mouth from other musicians who played for us, and some have returned to play multiple times. The journey of healing is not linear as the two news segments above highlight. COVID patients and families need support even upon returning home, as we all need mental health support right now, so it seems.
These evenings of Zoom concerts created a space to connect beyond medical conversations and gave us the opportunity to be together in the experience of music. We had over 40 artists play from around the country and all the way down to Buenos Aires, Argentina! The healing power of music is exponential, and we realize that so many families who are separated during these times could benefit as we have through the offering of technology and music because people need community now more than ever. We also realize the impact that COVID has had on musicians during this time and want to give them a platform to perform. As dad says, “I may have been by myself, but I was never alone.”
AND NOW — MuzicRX was born from this experience. We feel a responsibility to share this with everyone because it helped all of our mental health and wellbeing and although, “you may be by yourself, you are never alone.” The mission of MuzicRX is to build community and support people’s mental health and wellbeing through music. If you would like to join us for a show with MuzicRX you can connect with us on Instagram or Facebook. All are welcome and we hope to see you on the screen, or eventually in person.
And as the Grateful Dead said, what a long strange trip it’s been.
The three news segments linked in this article-
