Dear Matthew, Toby and Josie
Part of the reason why I started this blog nine years ago was to chronicle your life, so that if anything ever happened to me and I couldn't tell you your stories, you had this to refer to. Throughout that time I've mentioned a few bits and bobs about what's happening in the world, and of course, over the last two years, how we have been impacted by the global pandemic.
Well, as an update on the pandemic, Western Australia will finally be opening our domestic and international borders in the next week, some of which have been closed for almost 700 days. While this may have once seemed daunting, the vast majority of us have been triple vaccinated, so all we can do at this point is to hope for the best. Our case numbers have already started to spike, with numbers in the early thousands (if you remember, we once went into lockdown for five days over a single case) and so we are mentally preparing for the surge to come, borders or no borders. We will probably peak in the next two weeks, with numbers close to 10,000 per day expected. I'll keep you updated. What I am more worried about is constantly being considered close contacts, and then having to isolate in our house for 7 days each time that happens. We have a few contingencies in place but I know it will still be tricky to be stuck in the house. I am probably more scared of that than getting COVID to be honest!
Anyway, pandemic aside, a new threat has unfortunately arisen recently, which shadows any concerns I once had about the pandemic. Russia's leader has decided to go to war with Ukraine. This is an unprovoked war, and I will spare you the history of these two nations, but essentially Russia is attacking a country for very little reason other than they want the land and resources of that nation. This has caused international outcry, and countries are imposing sanctions and sending military aid to Ukraine, however they are not assisting in the war. The reason for this is because of the threat of nuclear weapons being used by Russia. And this is why I don't really care too much about the pandemic right now. Because the threat of the world being blown up dwarfs all else.
There is nothing I can do to help this, again, it's about relinquishing control. I've started to prepare an emergency kit, I've looked into what we can do to help Ukrainian refugees (currently 1 million people have fled Ukraine to bordering countries). And so I wrote the following post on Instagram, summing up my feelings on this:
'The world seems so heavy right now. When I pictured motherhood I didn’t see myself googling things like ‘impact of new pandemic on foetus’ or ‘how to best prepare your family for possible nuclear war’. I didn’t think I’d be sending my son to school in a mask but at the same time being really darn grateful he can actually still go to school. I want to keep the daily routine happening (don’t forget we have choir before school tomorrow) while also continuously checking for international updates (has a literal world war started?).
Anyway. I did picture three beautiful kids. And
here they are.
Tomorrow we will make pancakes and go to playgroup
and pray for peace.'
I've included photos I took at the beach recently, we went down one night just as the sun was setting. Today marks 18 months of us being a family of 5, and I can't imagine a better way to celebrate amongst the chaos of the world than like this.
Love you all,
Mum xxx
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