NEW BLOG SERIES: Shebbie's Live Life Library

Inspired During COVID-19

Hello Friends and Family!

It’s good to be back after a long pause from normal life. Now that the quarantine is gradually lifting, I’ve been slowly trying to get back into the swing of things here at SLLS. My team and I are working on a couple of projects we are excited to share with you soon. So stay tuned for some announcements coming your way.

In the meantime, there is one personal project I had not anticipated on but somehow unfolded over the course of COVID-19. Read on to learn more about it.

A Hidden Blessing:

I took advantage of the quarantined time to catch up on some books I purchased before the pandemic. My intention was to read them when I could find some leisure time. Thanks to Covid-19, time came sooner than I expected, but not in the way I hoped.

It was March 13th, the day before I was scheduled to board a flight heading to Patagonia, Chile for an all-women hiking adventure, that we got an order from Governor Gavin Newsom to stay home and quarantine ourselves from the coronavirus now spreading throughout California faster than any of the devastating wildfires we’ve seen over the years. To make matters worse, our guide, Kristin, sent an email informing us that she was taken into quarantine upon her arrival in Chile. Our trip was immediately cancelled.

I witnessed our world spiraling into chaos as we tried to adjust to the global changes pressed upon us so unexpectedly and so abruptly. Fear and uncertainty overwhelmed us as we scrambled to hoard supplies, mainly toilet-paper and food, while avoiding contracting coronavirus. We kept our distance from people, even to the point of avoiding eye contact. “So surreal” was all I could think of as I looked out the window of my downtown condo. The mask-covered masses hustling about in the city, soon dwindled down to empty streets as everyone took shelter in their homes. Our lives came to a halt, a standstill, and time seemed too also.

I spent the following weeks trying to adjust from feeling lonely to figuring out what to do with all this free time I suddenly had on my hands. I kept in touch with family and friends through Zoom, FaceTime and texts, but it didn't replace the presence of real human interactions. Wrestling and hugging my grandkids, plus sharing meals with my kids was greatly missed.

I dealt with my loneliness by binging on cheesecakes (yum!) delivered from Cheesecake Factory and watching all eight seasons of Game of Thrones, recommended by a friend. After awhile and a few pounds later, I decided it was time for a mindset shift. I needed to get out of this funk and resume the healthy lifestyle I worked so hard to attain and was so quickly coming undone.

“It occurred to me that one way to shift my mood was to learn more about my emotions.”

A month had gone by when it occurred to me that one way to shift my mood was to learn more about my emotions. I came to that conclusion when I noticed the stack of books vying for my attention every time I passed them by as they sat on my kitchen table. I dusted off the unopened books and as I read each title, I realized that perhaps between these pages, lay the answers to the many questions alluding to the past three years of my journey on healing and self-discovery.

So I sat down at my kitchen table and went on another binge, not cheesecakes, I threw away the leftovers. Instead, I engulfed as many books as I could during the following months of isolation.

When I completed the stack, I ordered more books from Amazon because one book led me to another and then another. Before I knew it, I had a library of books I could actually say I read. But more importantly, these books had a lot to say to me and I made the time to listen.

I dove into each one with an open mind. I wanted to learn and grow. I needed to understand more about myself and these books were going to teach me. This was my growth-mentality-mindset voice, challenging me and telling me to embrace this next chapter of my life because things were about to change, once again.

SHEBBIE’S LIVE LIFE LIBRARY

So now I would like to share with you the books I’ve read and a little bit about the impact each one has had on me.

I’m not going to go in-depth and give a commentary, you can search it out on your own if you want to. My goal is to just share what I got out of each one and why I think you may find it a good read too. Whenever I find a book I love, I like sharing it with others. Maybe this will spark an interest in you to pick up reading, again, if you haven’t in a while.

This was a hidden blessing that came out of COVID-19 for me. What hidden blessing did you receive from COVID-19?

If you want to share it with me, hit ”Like” and leave me a comment below. I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks,

Shebbie