Whether you are home alone or surrounded by your roommates, your family, your children, or your pets, the isolation of the past few weeks and coming weeks takes its toll.

Having already manicured my lawn, reorganized my garage and cleaned my house, all with the help of unpaid and unenthusiastic teens, I am tired of home care. The pets are particularly demanding, now that all of us are home constantly. Begging to be let in, and out, and in again. Begging for food and treats; our pets have slowly gained the upper-hand in the household dominance pyramid.

It is in these new constrained living parameters that old systems of behavior and interaction need to be reevaluated. I am not talking about social distancing, or avoiding shopping on your regular day, but the schedules we have maintained in our homes in the past. Those schedules do not hold up to 24 hour confinement.

After two weeks, we had a family meeting. We reorganized our daily schedules to better reflect our current lives. The weave of our family cloth was becoming unraveled and we needed to talk about how to keep it from unraveling further, as well as how to repair what had been lost. It took a few days to negotiate.

First we needed to address our loss. Loss of freedom, friends, privacy, and expectations. We needed to look at our loss of income and direction. We talked about how we were feeling and why. We shared our fears and disappointments.

Next, we looked at what could be salvaged from that loss. How we could continue communication with friends, how we could find ways to entertain ourselves and work together with better purpose. We addressed the work disparity in our home, the need to balance cleaning and cooking with leisure and recreation.

Don’t get me wrong, there was quiet sadness and resentment with the conversation for change. But after discussion it became evident we were on the right track. With four people in the house all the time, more meals were needed, more dishes accumulated, and more trash manufactured. The old ways of handling these chores no longer felt fair and logical.

While we are all here all the time, we are not all here together. Sleeping late into the morning and early afternoon, sequestering behind bedroom doors and video screens, communicating only to relate needs that others should fulfill, became the norm. When every interaction happens in yesterday’s day pajamas and demands action, the grace of human interaction can become strained. Respect and love take a backseat to disgruntled looks and terse behavior. We had to change our external actions or be changed internally for the worse.

So, we declared a reasonable time to wake up. We extended bedtimes but maintained screen time so that downtime was literally downtime. We instituted time for the family to come together, and time for individual members to be alone.

Finally, we talked about our love for each other and how we hoped this change to our daily routine would make loving each other easier. I don’t know if it will, but I hope.

There are those in our community who are not in this same position. You are home alone and isolated looking for interaction. I empathize, but do not have much direct experience in this isolation. Your comments and ideas for those suffering in isolation is encouraged. It would be most helpful to others in your same position if you shared your insight.

I hope that this time of isolation will make us stronger. I hope it will bring us together, closer than when this viral tragedy started. But hoping isn’t enough. We need to work with each other to set plans in place to move that dream forward. Moving the dream forward necessitates making and achieving small goals. It necessitates understanding change will happen. Your options are to participate in the change; use your influence in the process to your favor. Or push against the change, deny it, and suffer its influence without regard for you.

I hope you find peace in the daily challenges of life and comfort from our community making beacons of hope in their homes, just as you make a beacon of hope in your own.