BROKEN
Broken
Broken
Just like bones, our emotional hearts and spirits can be broken. It can be heart-breaking for parents to see their children's lives and educational pursuits so horribly disrupted by the pandemic. Essential workers may feel broken at having to push strenuously though long work weeks with restrictions on paid time off. Business owners and furloughed workers may feel broken by the uncertainty of the economy. Healthcare workers may feel broken by the gut-wrenching decisions and overwhelming shifts in protocols the virus has wrought. Those in senior living communities may feel their spirits broken by being restricted to their rooms, prohibited from visitors and social activities.
Maybe it feels like there's a piece of our lives in the memory of the way life used to be, and a piece of us in this present moment, and a piece of us living in a future moment where hopefully things are resolved. It is certainly understandable to feel like our lives have been blown apart - like we're trying to pull ourselves together or like pieces of us are missing. We have been cut out of each other's lives. We have been cut off from travel and physical exploration of the broader world. We have been squashed by huge decisions that no one has ever had to make before. These forces press down on us, amputate portions of our soul, our happiness... these forces break us.
Other words for this feeling: shattered, splintered, overpowered, crushed, fractured, fragmented, suffocated, suppressed
