This is such a strange time.

Such a strange time, in fact, that it’s already a cliche to even call this a strange time.

And the problem with calling it strange, I suppose, is that strange doesn’t even begin to describe 2020 — not to mention what might come next.

But language has its limitations, and so we do our best with what we have:

Strange.

Scary.

Crazy.

Lonely.

Overwhelming.

Exhausting.

Boring.

Anxious.

Terrifying — sometimes viscerally, sometimes existentially, and usually both.

And it’s hard to complain, because are safe together, for the time being, which means we are lucky. We are healthy, we are sheltered.

But I have to admit that of all the words above, overwhelming is the one that best describes 2020 for me. Our four kids turned 1, 2, 6 and 12 this summer, and with a partner working more than full-time, plus a pandemic that has stripped us of most of our supports, and I have been parenting 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And while it used to be that the older two would come home from school having exercised their mind and body, now if I don’t talk to them, they don’t talk to anybody. If I don’t go outside with them, they go out alone if they go out at all. If I don’t read the a book, nobody does. If we don’t sing a song together, they don’t sing. Things of that nature.

I’m pretty exhausted, which is probably my second-most-applicable word on the list, although they all fit. And let’s be clear: it’s taking a toll. I’ve been doing a real Ross/Rachel Will-They/Won’t-They kind of dance with my depression all year long. I don’t have the virus, but I often barely have the energy to get out of bed. I dread making the next meal, the next lunch, the next breakfast, and then cleaning it up, and then doing it again and again and again and again into infinity.

And as much as this is all true, this is a time of extremes. There are only two ways to be with the people we love right now: always or never. Too much or not enough. In sickness or in health.

It’s probably a combination of everything — anxiety, exhaustion, overwhelm and everything else — but even when I’ve had a few minutes of coherence before my head falls hard onto a pillow, I haven’t been able to really put my thoughts into words like I’m accustomed to doing. Now, it usually takes me at least a couple of relatively uninterrupted hyper-focus time to get something written, and that kind of time is only available in my house between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am. Coincidentally, that’s when I like to sleep. I often don't, but you know. Those are not my most mentally productive hours when I’m also getting up in the sixes with babies every day.

But I know there’s something more making it hard to write right now. An added layer. And I think it’s this: I believe it has to get worse before things can get better.

As bad as things are — as strange, as unbelievable, as surreal, as heartbreaking — we need structural changes deeper than most of us are willing to go.

We’ve already seen the uprising that swelled during the summer start to lose its grip. If the virus “goes away” today, we will go back to the way things were. We haven’t been cut off from that old world long enough yet to have forgotten the old ways. They still sound comforting, comfortable.

But I feel uncomfortable saying that. I’m not trying to wish ill on any of us, and I don’t want it to be true that we have to plunge down even deeper before we can start hoping to come back up for air. After months of everything being cancelled, including vacations and birthday parties and in-person friendships and most hugs, telling my six-year-old that he probably wasn’t going to be able to go trick-or-treating this year was unexpectedly heartbreaking — and not an actual problem, given the gravity of the world right now, but still. The world has been pretty obviously heading for this kind of confluence of disasters for a long time now, but we at least used to be able to keep ourselves busy enough to ignore it for stretches of time. Now, we have nothing but time to think about it —unless you have kids, in which case you have no time to think about anything, period.

See, even this blog post, the first thing I’ve managed to get written recently, feels disjointed, like I threw a bunch of word darts at a dart board, but none of them quite hit the bullseye of what I actually feel.

So, let me really take aim right now and see if I can at least get close:

I don’t want all this to be for nothing. All this loss and pain, all this sickness, all these fires, all these closures, all the police violence, all the time in the streets, all the time in our houses.

Now is the time to start building the new world. To start living and educating our kids in the ways our hearts have always whispered to us is possible.

It’s hard. We have no road maps for something like this, because this is such a strange time that it’s unprecedented in our collective memory. It’s up to us to see this as an opportunity to gently embark on a new path forward, and to be brave enough to take the first steps in revolutionary faith rather than in fear of the unknown.

You’re a hero for being yourself in these times. Thank you for your courage.