The thought of life going back to normal blows my mind | Cheryl Gibbs

But I also fear that we tried this before and it made things worse. After the last lockdown last summer, we all began to relax again. We were encouraged to support local businesses and ‘eat out to help out’ by dining in local restaurants and cafes.

Despite restricting ourselves on meeting up in large groups we visited friends, saw family members and began to relax our shoulders from the tension it had been carrying for so long and where did it get us exactly?

Back into a deeper, darker hole than we were before and that little bit of freedom that we had meant that the worst days were ahead of us.

Christmas was restricted to just one day with only a handful of people. There was no Boxing Day; no New Year’s Eve; no New Year’s Day.

Now as we head towards the third month of 2021 without having seen anyone in real life, only in the two dimensional virtual world, I worry that all the news about restaurant and pub gardens opening; news of sporting events coming back in the summer; cinemas and theatres opening and even whispers that come mid-summer, we can head to an actual nightclub and have a night of fun – dancing and cocktails – that all of this can be done with actual people that we don’t actually live with just blows my mind. Does that make me strange? Have I become a hermit over the last year?

On the one hand, I can’t contain my excitement. This year’s been amazing as we had our daughter, Harley, but it’s also been impossibly hard. Can life really go back to normal? Do we want it to?

Questions to ponder and it’s given me real food for thought this week. I just want to remain safe and I want my family to be safe. If we can do that whilst having some freedom then, that’s amazing and sign me up.

But if it doesn’t can we, as society, really handle even darker days to come? That I’m not so sure of…

I’m trying to remember the good things about lockdown

I’ve struggled, like everyone else, staying in all the time.

It’s hard with a one-year-old who is so curious about the world, about life, about people, to restrict her so much and it’s increasingly becoming harder as she gets older. But I, like many others, have also liked the simplicity of a restricted life. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather have the chaos that normal life brings – all those choices.

During the last year, my brain has stopped thinking about the choices I once had. We have tried to find the pleasure in the basics and over time it has become normal. I can’t wait for life to be normal again but I’m going to try to remember the good that came out of this time as much as I can.

A bit of sunshine makes all the difference to my mood

I probably seem like I’m having a nostalgic or emotional moment in my column this week and perhaps I am.

Maybe it’s the fact that we have hope again, or maybe it’s the simple fact that we’ve had some sunshine through the rain clouds.

I definitely think I have SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I struggle massively when the sky is thick with rain and dark clouds day in, day out.

The pleasure I’ve had in being able to take Harley out on her first trike this week has been absolutely incredible and I take none of it for granted. We took her to Petersfield Pond this week and we just relished in having the sun on our faces.

Brighter days are coming…