by Pete Wallis
Pete Wallis reflects on our recent Mint House event 'Emerging from lockdown – a restorative approach to restoring relationships and rebuilding community’. We gathered on Zoom to reflect on the impact of COVID-19 lockdown over the past year and share our personal experiences.
We are all living through a unique time. COVID-19 has affected everyone, but everyone differently – we’re in the same storm, and in different boats.
For many the pandemic has been an anxious and traumatic experience, bringing outbreaks of loneliness, hardship and grief. Life altering times, leaving us exhausted. Often the biggest impact has been on relationships. Some have been intensified as we live within our little bubbles, some have been stretched thin, some lost altogether. Endings have been difficult – colleagues slipping away without a farewell do, funerals restricted to the closest relatives, conducted outside or on zoom, sometimes abandoned altogether. I think of the impact on our 5-year-old neighbour across the road who regressed to babyhood during lockdown, and of my 92-year-old mother separated from family and friends. I reflect on the new language we have become accustomed to; self-isolate, social distance, you are muted, you’re frozen…
For some there have been unexpected blessings as well as losses. In restorative justice, people often speak of gifts arising from the trauma of a crime. People realise how resilient they can be in adversity, notice the strengthening of family, reflect on what is of greatest importance to them in their life. They survived. In lockdown many of us found joy; in the reawakening of nature, zooming with friends and family across continents, getting to know our closest neighbours. Some families with young adults thrown back together have grown closer. In my work in youth justice, some young people have felt safer, protected for the time being from the pressures of peers to offend and from those seeking to exploit them.
Restorative practice has story telling at its heart. Life is made up of the tales we tell each other, an expression of our need to make sense of the world and our drive to find meaning, particularly in hard times. Stories help us support one another, to build and maintain, and to repair our relationships when they are broken. We come together to heal our old stories by their telling, and to make new ones.
Coming together to share our reflections on COVID-19 provided an opportunity to reflect on our individual journeys through this storm, to share stories of where we have been, and chart our courses towards hope and healing. Like our ancestors sitting round a fire, or the healing circles that provide the inspiration for restorative justice, we put aside time to talk, to repair the storm damage to our spiders’ web of relationships, carefully darning the holes in the social fabric of our lives.
Healing old stories and making new ones is slow, building new relationships remotely is hard. Weaving the interpersonal web has to be done strand by strand. In reading this you have joined the Mint House network, and we look forward to joining together with you at future events!