Sandpiper: May - July 2020

SANDP I PER | JULY 2020 19 Disruption reveals what was broken in ‘normality’ This month, Daniel Giles shares his personal experience of changed routines due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlights the challenges this brings to Autistic individuals. ROUTINE helps to provide structure to my life and can have a calming effect on me. My family and others have worked with me to help me adapt to changed routines. Yet, this change only affects a small part of my life. On a much bigger scale, I’ve found adjusting to this pandemic a big challenge and have struggled to cope with many daily routines being changed at once. I would also be constantly checking the media in a quest to find out when life would get back to ‘normal’. I’ve needed support from family to help me adjust to our new way of living for the foreseeable future. I have found ways of establishing and adjusting to changed routines, especially by: • Finding new ways to continue doing the things I love, such as running my fortnightly scripture discussion groups over video conferencing. • Creating new routines that are a new ‘normal’ for me for the foreseeable future. • In my working from home, keeping similar routines as I would if I were physically going to work. • Avoiding looking at the news as this only contributes to my anxiety and trusting my family keeping an eye on any new directions that apply to me, while focussing on the Good News of Jesus. I have slipped up in this area but after a recent meltdown, I’ve recommitted to taking a break from news articles and even Facebook. • Focusing on what I can control, while surrendering to God what I can’t control. I need to remember that I can’t control what others do and that feeling stressed about the things that are out of my control don’t bring peace for me. • Embracing this time as an opportunity to consider what’s really important in my life, strengthening my prayer life and exploring new platforms for disability advocacy. • Maintaining my social connections remotely. • Going on walks and often including Churches on my walking circuit so that I could be as close as I physically could to the blessed sacrament, even if for a brief moment. • With the support of my mental health practitioner, continuing to maintain physical contact with my immediate family, as it’s helped me to maintain my mental health • Growing in gratitude for the things God has given me. For example, it’s felt weird being in a virtual world of live- streamed masses and video conferencing, but I can be thankful for the gift of technology to sustain us at this time and perhaps even embrace video conferencing more for long-distance communication. I also support the Church’s mission to value human life from conception through to natural death. I’ve often wondered how I can do this more but do so within the framework of a consistent life ethic and the wider context of disability inclusion. If we weren’t flattening the curve, our health care system could be overwhelmed and if there’s not enough capacity to care for COVID-19 patients who need hospital care, medical professionals could be faced with tough decisions on who gets to live. Decisions would be made on whose lives are seen as more ‘valuable’ and it could be that the lives of senior citizens and people with disability are seen as disposable, resulting in these people being left to die. There are times I’ve wanted to return to normal routine, and I pray that we can return to a new normality sooner rather than later and while also protecting lives. It’s good to see that we’re easing of restrictions and I hope we can continue to do so without impacting lives. But I am also working on accepting God’s will for me in this moment, grow in patience and be thankful for all God is already doing. This pandemic highlights that it’s easy to support certain values but hard to maintain these values when it forces me out of my comfort zone. There have been days I haven’t coped and wanted to give up. However, this new routine is perhaps an answered prayer, an opportunity to do my bit to protect other human lives. Daniel Giles has gone on long reflective walks during lockdown, such as when he took this photograph of Sacred Heart Cathedral. Photo: Daniel Giles.