Love in the Time of Covid-19

           How can there be love without physical closeness?  For myself, I find the saying,   “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone” to be very true for this time of Covid-19, when we are very much appreciating our friends and families; our work and paychecks (whether or not we’re still working or getting paychecks); our homes and the availability of food and water, entertainment and ways to connect with one another. 

Most Americans of boomer-or-below ages haven’t lived through a crisis as frightening as the one we are dealing with now. Boomers’ parents lived through WWII, the Great Depression, some of them lived through the Holocaust in Europe.

We Westerners were never prepared for the unpredictable Covid-19, where are sheltering in place, we aren’t sure about what protects us, who might be immune or when it will be safe to go out again. We are frightened about money and restless to resume normal life. Normal Life? We may never shake hands or kiss people on both cheeks (as the French do) again. 

And, yes, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson (also a breast cancer survivor) got better after contracting the virus, and they’ve even come home from Australia, where they caught Covid-19 and got sick from it, but survived.

But we can’t know at this time who will get this virus and whether if we get it, we will be able to live through it.  I have some cousins who are pediatricians, where my cousin Jen tested positive and her husband, Sam, tested negative. Jen’s fine now and both of them are still working in the hospital.

My sweet daughter-in-law Flore in France got it and she was very sick for a while, but my son and grandson only got mild cases of it. (Do they need to disinfect everything? Are they now immune? Nobody knows.) Note that since she contracted the virus, we’ve learned that stomach symptoms, which were the first symptoms she had, may be the first signs of Covid-19, with other signs coming later.

My son at the Veteran’s Administration is still seeing patients, since he tells me the VA’s telecommunications don’t work reliably. (How sad that we have enough money for more and more weapons, but not enough to adequately protect the men and women who risk their lives to keep us safe or to protect those who keep our heroes well.) He bought his own mask online.

For myself and my partner, we are over seventy, so we’ve been at home since the Pandemic started. Though, occasionally, Ron goes out with gloves and mask to grocery shop or do other errands. (This youTube video suggests that there are other important protections besides a mask and gloves. If you care to watch it, here is the link: https://youtu.be/sjDuwc9KBps.) 

I think another challenge, aside from the main one of staying well through this crazy time, is to stay mentally healthy. Some of the suggestions I’ve heard from my clients and colleagues are: Try to establish a routine (and don’t beat yourself up if you can’t seem to adhere to it in some perfect way); Try to learn something new. (I find the Babbleapp helpful, if you’ve always wanted to learn a language.) ; Use the Internet to connect with friends and loved ones on Zoom, Skype, or Facetime. I’ve been going to two to three OA 12-step meetings per week and family meetings on Zoom every Saturday night. I’ve had several playdates with my grandson on Skype, and, as a psychotherapist, I have continued to see my clients and colleagues on Facetime and Zoom.

Mental health columnist and practitioner Phillip Chard, suggests that for some personalities routine may actually increase anxiety. So, the same tips may not work for all.

I find entertainment is helpful. I watch interesting films, documentaries, and any form 

of online entertainment that can relieve the barrage of news about the virus all day. Yes, stay informed. Heed the warnings. We need to stay informed and heed the warnings about self-quarantining and disinfecting, but don’t OD on the news.

    I try to remember the brave Holocaust survivors, one in particular, Aaron Elster, who, when the Nazis lined up his family, with him as the youngest, his father told him, “Run!”  From the age of seven to nine, thanks to some neighbors Holocaust survivors call “Righteous Gentiles”, Aaron crouched in an attic. (See “Sixty Minutes Overtime” for his story). And he was the only one in his family who made it through the Holocaust alive.

This is a time so many have shown their love, especially those on the front line. the health care workers, and police and firefighters and first responders who put their own lives on the line. But also the grocery store workers and letter-carriers, truckers and those with the skills to make protective masks. Even those of us at home can show one another great love by calling old friends and new, or people we know who might be alone or depressed and being supportive to one another. I know my 12-step OA Zoom meetings are lifesavers. And talking to my friends who live in Milwaukee and Florida, California, Virginia, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina and gathering with family members gather at our Zoom Saturday Nights to check in, exchange recipes and ideas can really pick up my spirits.

I’ve changed my work availability to six days per week. I find, as the old saying goes, “Our clients come to heal us.” That is, perhaps, why I find our sessions just about as healing as, hopefully, they do. And I do phone sessions with my own therapist (yes, therapists need their own therapists!) every week, as well.

            And I find when I’m not working or writing, my partner and I watch films, television or cable series, or I read or listen to books on my phone app.

            Making a gratitude list daily, learning things I always wanted to learn, but never had time for, and writing (using my creative side) when I am not working with clients (also using my creative side) to be crucial. So often, I think, We, in our generation, mostly didn’t worry about running out of food, water or medication. 

Here are some of my favorite movies, cable and television shows, 

and books, should you have access to a computer, television,  or cell phone.

Films/Documentaries

A Man Called Ove

Antonia’s Line

The African Queen

Baby Boom

Baghdad Café

The Big Sick

The Book Club

Bread and Tulips

The Driving Lesson

Downton Abbey(the movie)

Embrace

Enchanted April

The English Teacher

Fargo

Fences

Finding Your Feet

Five Flights Up

The Fundamentals of Caring

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Heartburn

Hidden Figures 

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

How to Get Over a Breakup

Hysteria

If These Knishes Could Talk: The Story of the New York Accent

The Intouchables

It’s Complicated

Jenny’s Wedding

Maggie’s Plan

Mama Mia

Mama Mia, Here We Go Again

Mask

Moonstruck

Most Exotic Marigold Hotel I

Most Exotic Marigold Hotel II 

Out of Africa

Passion Fish

Ricky and the Flash

Shirley Valentine

Silkwood

The Silver Linings Playbook

Stanley & Iris

The Tango Lesson

Tea with Mussolini

Transamerica

Turtle Diary

Unconditional Love

 An Unmarried Woman

Waiting to Exhale

BBC Series/Often on PBS

Agatha Raisin

The Bletchley Circle

Call the Midwife

Doc Martin

Downton Abbey

Mum

Netflix Series/Specials

 Atypical

The Crown

Grace and Frankie

Kim’s Convenience 

The Kominsky Method

Special

Unorthodox

Amazon Prime Movies and Series

Brittany Runs a Marathon

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

New in Town

Transparent

NOTE: movies can be rented or bought on Amazon Prime by going to Amazon.comand finding the movie you like and then clicking on the part that says “Watch on Amazon”. (Of course, you have to be an Amazon Prime subscriber). Usually, these rentals are $4.95 apiece or so—and you don’t have to worry about your library being closed.

Hulu

The Handmaid’s Tale

 Shrill 

 This is Us

Cable TV

Barry-HBO

Big Little Lies-HBO

Episodes-Showtime

Game of Thrones-HBO (not for the faint of heart)

Gentleman Jack”-HBO

Homeland-HBO

Insecure-HBO

The Morning Show–HBO/Apple TV

The Newsroom -HBO

Broadcast Television on Demand

Madam Secretary

Mom

Scandal

Books /for Reading or Listening

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativityby Julia Cameron

The Bette Davis Club by Jane Lotter

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

The Cactus by Sarah Haywood

Daisy Jones and the Six: A Novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

Heartburnby Nora Ephron

Homework: A Memoir  by Julie Andrews

The Help   by Kathryn Stockett

How to Walk Away  by Katherine Center

I Almost Forgot About You  by Terry McMillan

It’s Not All Downhill From Here by Terry McMillan

 In Grace’s Time  by Kathie Giorgio

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone  by Lori Gottlieb

Mrs. Saint and the Defectivesby Julie Lawson Timm

My Life So Far: A Memoir  by Jane Fonda

The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah

One Day in December by Josie Silver

The Rosie Effectby  Graema Simsion

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Sage’s Tao Te Ching: A New Interpretation  by William Martin

She Wants It  by Jill Soloway

Something in the Water  by Catherine Steadman

Still Life with Breadcrumbs  by Anna Quindlen

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?  by Maria Semple

When Life Gives You Lululemons  by Lauren Weisberger

The Wife  by Meg Wolitzer

Where the Crawdads Singby Delia Owens

Whisper Networkby Chandler Baker

      And anything by spiritual author Eckhart Tolle on YouTube, or in his books, “The Power of Now” 

and/or “A New Earth”

       So, how am I writing about Lovein the Time of Covid-19? I guess it’s because we are all in the same 

boat and we’re managing to connect and support one another. We are reaching out to help one another. After all, we are living in a corporeal society during much less corporeal times. But, for ourselves and one another, we are making do and helping each other. In 

my book, that’s love! 

By Linda Benjamin, LCSW

Psychotherapist & author of Girls’ Guide to Ageing With Grit and Gusto: A Memoir and Six Interviews. Website: epiphanyinmysixties.com 

·     

Psychotherapist & author of Girls’ Guide to Ageing With Grit and Gusto: A Memoir and Six Interviews. Website: epiphanyinmysixties.com 

I'm Back With Grit and Gusto!

It's been five years since I last posted a blog. This is not because I haven't been thinking of my possible readers, but because I have in an even more intensive way. I've been writing a book, which is part memoir and part interview and all about the journey of aging for women. (Yes, men have a journey, too. But I'm not an expert on that.)

I noticed long, long ago--in my thirties, really, that my older women role models, my aunts and my mom, were feeling less valued. And as many people do, I blamed the victim/s. Later, as I approached my sixties and grew into my seventies, I realized that our society is particularly cruel to older women. Often, these days, I find I am spoken to as if I am hearing impaired or slightly demented. Sometimes, younger wait staff will call me "sweetheart" or "dear." I don't see them doing that with men or younger women. I believe it's meant to be nice, but I find it pejorative.

I was thrilled to see the BBC series and film "Downton Abby" with its take on older women. Played by veteran actresses, Dame Maggie Smith, 85, and Dame Penelope Wilton, 73, the older women in the Crawley family are important in their communities, advisors to their children and grandchildren, and, even, the objects of love relationships. In the same way, I was excited to see Jane Fonda, 82, and Lily Tomlin, 81, in  Netflix's "Grace and Frankie," where socialite Grace and hippie Lily are catapulted into living together after their husbands (former law partners) come out as gay and in love with one another. Both of the female characters have love interests, ideas and businesses, caring families and good friendships. (Though most of us don't have California beach homes, children who live nearby and are very involved in our lives, and opportunities to bring forth new inventions, like the Menage a Moi, a vibrator for arthritic older women.)

I do think, ever so slowly, I am seeing the occasional ad with Mae Musk, the glamorous silver haired seventy-something year old Covergirl model and Dame Helen Mirren, the still-sexy 74 year old L'Oreal model. And I love that CBS Sunday Morning stars Jane Pauley, 70 years old, and features Rita Braver, 71, as one of its reporters. Who's the toughest broad in the Senate? Eighty-year old Nancy Pelosi. And other working women artists of age are singer Tina Turner, 80 years old, and actor Loretta Devine, 71, Meryl Streep,  71, Diane Keaton, 74, and Betty White, 98.  A good sign, as well, was first time novelist, Delia Owens, 71, for her topper of the New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019, Where the Crawdads Sing.

In the past, the 39-year old Jane Pauley was replaced on the Today Show with the younger Deborah Norville. The ageist premise of the time was that nobody wanted to see an "aging" woman. My theory is that ad guys and television power guys had to want to bed or at least desire their female anchors. And in commercials, except for dental adhesives or chair lifts, they cast only women they considered sexually viable (i.e. young and "hot"). And in films, the real life directors and actors most often traded in their older wives (often much younger than they were to begin with) for younger ones to help them avoid feeling their age. Exceptions were Carl Reiner, married to Estelle Reiner, ten years his senior, for sixty-five years and Samuel L. Jackson and LaTonya Richardson, married 40 years, along with a handful of others.

So, if all these public images are in our faces; of youth equals attractiveness or worthiness for women, how are the rest of us ordinary women supposed to feel? In my case, I had a couple of family role models who did not buy into the if-you're-old-you're-over media message and I have several friends who are who I want to be when I grow up--and I'm seventy-three. 

With this blog, my book, and with womens' groups I am facilitating, I hope to empower older women, as well as with becoming most comfortable with my own age--in the manner of Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dames Helen, Maggie, Penelope and Judy, I hope to be (as Gandhi said, and I'm paraphrasing here), at least a small part of, the change I want to see in the world.