Uncertain. Tumultuous. Standstill. Liberating. Whatever adjective is your go-to descriptor for the current climate brought on by COVID-19’s entry into our lives in mid-March I can certainly relate to it. Let me share with you a little bit of why that is...
When the coronavirus first made its appearance in the United States, I was happily sitting on a beach in Panama without a care in the world, loving every aspect of my life as LtN’s Panama Program Director. When COVID-19 hit the US, I was forced into considering one of the most challenging, heart-wrenching moral debates that I have encountered thus far in my life: to stay in Panama or to return to my US home and family. At that point, all I could think was that Bocas had become my home, its community my family and my work with LtN so much more than just “work.”
Two weeks later, Panama announced that it would be closing its borders to all commercial travel. So, armed with a return flight to Bocas at the end of May, I found myself on a plane headed back stateside.
When I landed, I was united with my family along with a flood of unexpected and unknown. Not only had COVID-19 sent me away from the people and the programs that I had dedicated myself to for nearly a year, it had altered my role within LtN as well. How could I be an influential member of our team if I couldn’t run our programs in Panama?
Over the past four and a half months (and a cancelled May return flight), I have had the privilege of finding a very profound answer to this question… well several answers to be exact.
On the macro-level, I have had the opportunity to dig into more facets of Lacrosse the Nations with tasks that hadn’t previously fallen within my PD purview. On the micro-level, I have created professional development tools for our international coaches, dived into the nitty gritty of donor relations and data entry, and learned what really lies behind managing websites and analyzing their traffic. I have helped evaluate what matters most in our programs and established with coworkers how we can best prioritize our goals.
I have found myself connecting more with our mission and the people that tirelessly work to achieve it than I had while I was on the ground.
Taking a step back now, the adjectives I would use to describe “quarantimes” for me are surprising and enlightening. The virus that I thought had completely upended a years’ worth of hard work and uprooted me from a life full of freedom, self-discovery and gratitude on an island in Panama has actually opened my eyes to more confidence, joy and connection than I had ever imagined. For that, I am grateful.
-Maria McDonough, Program Director