we are not “tiger king” people anymore

Mar 11

We are not the same people we were in early 2020.

Remember Tiger King? I barely recognize the woman that watched that show, takeout sushi on her lap, mouth agape in titillated disbelief. She didn’t know that she’d look back at herself one day, mouth agape in disbelief at how much has changed since Carole fed her husband to a tiger (spoilers).

I still get takeout (duh), but almost everything else about me has been slightly altered. I view everything through a lens of a person who has experienced a prolonged trauma (while acknowledging that I have been extremely fortunate and privileged). The things I once viewed as routine self-care (like haircuts and pedicures) are now an infrequent and lackluster attempt at normalcy.

And now that the pand-weddings are happening, workers are being summoned back to the office, and the as-yet-uncertain return to school looms, we’re faced with a mundane question that holds new weight: what am I going to wear? How do we dress this person who doesn’t feel, look, or think the same as they once did?

The mundane act of dressing, that self-indulgent long lunch with friends, the excitement of a night out - all of those things that we desperately missed for 18 months - are back. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t feel the way I thought I would. I didn’t start hugging, lunching, and traveling as soon as I thought I would. The habit of pandemic life has changed me.

Luckily, I’ve done this before. Not a pandemic, but I’ve been through a season of core-level change. Maybe you have, too. It’s called Motherhood. Life is full of these seasons where our identity is stripped away, we have to experience a reckoning with our innermost selves, and come out again on the other side, looking around and wondering where we go from here.

If you’re there now, and I’m guessing you might be on some level, I can tell you where we go: up. We go up! Rising up can look many different ways, and that is individual to each of us. What better way is there to rise, than to invest in yourself? Investing in yourself is a guaranteed winning bet. So, go for it, you cats and kittens!