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On Lockdown Balcony Life

By 2nd April 2021 April 22nd, 2021 No Comments

Lockdown Life is never ending. It’s been OVER a year, and while people keep telling us “I don’t know how you manage” – me neither. I don’t know how we’re doing this, really. I’m living it, and it feels impossible, and yet… here we are. There’s no choice in it, so onwards we go. I’m trying to find the silver lining, and todays was… I mean, if we’re relegated to the balcony, it’s nice that we have chairs now.

Officially, clinically extremely vulnerable people are able to come out of shielding in the UK, but knowing the government doesn’t prioritise disabled people, that we live in an incredibly ableist system, it’s not easy to trust that advice or guidance. Particularly when the letter basically said you no longer need to shield, but we suggest you engage in behaviours that look an awful lot like shielding, but it’s just guidance and all the support that helps you do that is removed. Okay then.

So we do what we always do, which is to read more and try inform ourselves best we can, weigh up our options, figure out how comfortable we are with different levels of risk… At this point we’re still sitting with it, because it’s hard… figuring out a plan and comfort levels, how do you define what is acceptable risk when the consequences are so dire? How do you balance quality of life and risk? How do we ask those questions of ourselves?

It’s a tricky one, there’s no right answer and to be honest, this has been an ongoing conversation all year and we’re tired. So, we sit with our questions, and we hang out on the balcony.

Still, he looks pretty cool, hey?

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