It has been a long year and a long winter. What started as few weeks turned into months of waiting, waking up stressed, checking the news on an hourly basis and learning to decode COVID statistics. In other words, it has been hard. It got very easy not to care – when something bad happens every day, you tune it out. I am not even going to mention what it could look like if you or your loved ones got sick or lost jobs. It felt like driving in a long tunnel without light for a while.

During our trip in Switzerland I had a similar experience, when the car enters a tunnel in the mountain. At first, you assume that it is going to take few seconds but then with every turn the car keeps driving further and further into the mountain…at some point all you see is darkness and that’s when you notice that GPS signal and phone signals are no longer there…but you need to keep driving because at some point you will see the light again. Even the longest tunnel cannot go forever. Even the longest battle, the longest war will end. And so will pandemic, one day.

I can sense it in the air. I can see it on the news. We get more positive news and less negative ones. We hear about the number of cases dropping. We hear about more countries, states, provinces and cities reopening. We hear about more vaccines, better medicine and everywhere in the world people finding ways to treat the disease. We hear about businesses opening again, organizations hiring and more supports available. It gets easier to breathe. Every day we notice more sunshine, more birds singing, more activity outside. Life is about to resume. Spring is about to begin.

So have some hope. Whatever you are going through, know that one day all of the bad things will fade. Nothing can go forever. Not all of them will fade on their own, some will fade because we got stronger, we learned to deal with them and they no longer scare us. What was terminal yesterday is treatable today. What felt exhausting yesterday will feel light tomorrow. We can carve out doors today in what used to be walls yesterday. We can and we will survive. We will get past it and move forward. We can.