Amanda Lamb: This too shall pass

Believe it or not, the biggest symptom of the coronavirus right now is anxiety. You can literally feel it in the air. Anywhere you go. People are standing apart, they’re opening door handles with their shirt sleeves or paper towels. They are wiping things down. Carrying hand sanitizer everywhere they go. There’s no toilet paper. You get the point.

And while some of the anxiety has to do with the fear of getting sick, a lot of it also has to do with the fear of the unknown. People are worried about their jobs. What will happen if they get sick and cannot work? Will they get paid? People are worried about their small businesses. If customers stop going out, how will they stay afloat? These are all valid and understandable reasons to have anxiety.

No one feels our anxiety more than our children do. And while it will be impossible to hide it, we have to figure out ways to keep them not just physically healthy, but also emotionally healthy.

Amanda Lamb: The emotional toll of the coronavirus

Starting this week, I will have a college student at home who is facing an unknown rest of her semester, and a high school student who desperately craves interaction with her classmates and needs face-to-face support from her teachers. Both are working online. They will be facing new challenges, as we adults are also facing the challenge of this difficult and complicated time.

So, how do we handle it? As I took a Sharpie and crossed out more than a dozen things on my home calendar in the kitchen, I actually felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. The half marathon is canceled. Travel canceled. Dance events canceled. Speaking engagements canceled. Our lives as a family, my life as a professional person with many roles, our lives as a community are forever frenetic. Maybe there is a small silver lining in all of this, a chance to slow down, a chance to engage with our families, a chance to silence the noise that characterizes modern life. It is not a bad thing to spend time with your family without the distractions that are normally in our paths.

It is how we choose to use our time during this time that will define whether or not the anxiety consumes us. I say we embrace this new, temporary normal, re-connect with our families, take a walk outside, clean a closet, read a book, connect with people that you love and miss online, watch a movie, play a board game, and remember, just like every other challenging time in life, this too shall pass.