You have the opportunity in front of you to create a new normal after so much normal was ripped away not long ago.

I believe and think humans long for safety and security. When something big and catastrophic happens, it causes trauma, and the only thing you and I want is to feel normal again.

Quarantine and coronavirus are merely the lens through which I am going to examine the concept of a new normal, why they are important and why it’s vital to establish them.

Normal Falls Away

Normal is subjective. Surely it is defined differently depending on the person describing it. However, normal is something you and I rely on. It gives us peace. There’s a certain comfort in the predictability in knowing the sun will rise in the morning, we’ll go to work or school, come home, work out, eat, then go to sleep to wake up and do it again.

Maybe it sounds monotonous; it kind of is. But it’s also normal.

This was the routine almost everyone in the world followed up until a couple months ago. Without doubt, there were varying degrees of what normal was like for everyone.

Normal moves from subjective to concrete when things shift so rapidly, and we can’t keep up. Our normal helps stabilize us and keep us sane.

To be clear, though, this experience of having something normal and sacred stripped away isn’t unique to the coronavirus pandemic. It happens in all areas of life, especially in our relationships. And when those life-stopping, normal-interrupting moments happen, we will always come to a point on the journey where we realize the next stage will be difficult.

Because we have to rebuild. We have to create a new normal. The normal that was lost won’t work anymore. It didn’t adapt and it had to be done away with. What was once a point of comfort—the normal you and I created for ourselves prior to trauma or change—doesn’t exist with the same reverence and power it once did.

The Shift

As normal is so important to have, it becomes a mission to establish it as soon as possible after a huge shift.

When quarantine started for California a couple months ago, and likewise for the whole country—and the whole world even earlier—we willingly complied because the knowledge was there in everyone’s thoughts:

This wasn’t going to last forever.

However, people were struggling. You and I were struggling. What was once our normal routine and everyday life had turned into uncertain sand beneath our feet. I distinctly remember thinking at one point only one week in: There’s no way things will go back to normal after this. The trauma was too severe, the change was too steep, the result was too shocking. Nothing would be the same.

The natural human inclination is to make it through these moments as quick as possible. No one wants to be uncomfortable and uncertain for longer than they need to be, so we work to establish a new routine and a new normal. Fast.

However, in quarantine, the new normal would have to be temporary. And you and I adapted. We created a semblance of normal for ourselves so we could dedicate as much energy as we could to surviving, keeping sanity intact, processing grief and panic and sadness.

Then another shift. I woke up one day feeling sad. At this point, quarantine was seven weeks deep and my emotions and body had adapted quite well. You could even say I was happy in my own little cocoon at home, working from the comfort of my room and spending every second with my dog by my side.

The Rebirth

In addition to having the privilege of working from home and having my dog keeping me company, I was keeping my emotions and reactions and processing in check. I needed to be able to give myself grace in how I was handling this sudden and grievous change. And seven weeks in,