Compassion a bastion amid strife and exclusion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/02/2025 (412 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three o’clock in the morning at the height of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am sneaking out of bed to carve out the only hours of solitude I can find.

I’m not doing this for my own health, but to attempt to complete an assignment for a master’s degree I’d only just begun when COVID-19 arrived. Curling up on the couch with my laptop, I am suddenly crestfallen by the sound of little feet following me downstairs. I start to cry, and manage to shoot off an email to my professor before my son crawls into my lap and we head back to bed.

I’m sure we’ve all had these moments of futility. My kids were three, five and six years old then, and a friend remarked how fun it must be to have them all to ourselves all day and night! Another friend, who lives alone, was on the opposite end of the solitude spectrum, and still refers to those months as the hardest in her life.

The second wave of the pandemic hit Winnipeg in early winter. There were no playgrounds, parks, libraries, museums or coffee shops. We would take our kids to the legislative grounds to run between the statues and up and down the stairs, but outdoor spaces were too cold a setting to attempt to get university work done. There was literally nowhere to escape to and seemingly no understanding that for some of us, online classes were even more difficult to attend than in-person.

This moment came flooding back to me last week when it was announced we may see sudden sharp tariffs inflicted upon us by our southern neighbour. Seven minutes after the news arrived, I received a text from a friend in Minneapolis. We tried cheering one another up with silly memes. He’s originally from Venezuela, and is worried about friends and family. The subtext was there: we probably won’t be seeing one another again for a while.

I spent more time that week reading product labels around my home, thinking about how I could replace them with Canadian-made alternatives, wondering how this would affect our family budget. I made a plan to explore Canadian cosmetics with my stepdaughter. Everything made me feel like we were on the brink of reordering our lives once again to make the best of an unwanted, unbeckoned and uncertain reality.

When I dragged myself from bed the morning after my late-night meltdown on the couch, I resolved to find a solution and surmised that bed-and-breakfasts in the area would be without guests, but perhaps would allow a tired mother a place to hammer out a few essays now and then. I did not expect the first person to pick up the phone would be equally as happy to hear this plan.

Christine explained she’d also worked towards her master’s degree years ago with children running about the house, and she empathized with how difficult it was. She said her house was large enough, her children now grown, and she wasn’t worried about the risk of illness brought in by someone coming and going. And she offered me a key, so I could come and go as I needed. I felt like someone had just tossed me a life preserver.

It’s easy to forget the humanity within a crisis. It’s easy to jump to action and blame, and to commit to a kind of hyper self-sufficiency. Make a plan. Gather resources. Stay informed. Look after your own.

But is it really that productive to spend 20 minutes reading the back of every bottle in the bathroom, Googling “what is the difference between ‘made in’ and ‘product of?’” Does that need to happen to move forward? Do I need to refresh my news apps every hour to ensure I’m prepared for the next crisis?

I’m working on being more aware of my own agency and the profound power of community in an effort to sustain the level of hope and resiliency the coming months may ask of me. I’m trying to remember that hiding in the wings are friendships undiscovered, resources unexplored and adventures not yet begun.

Christine and I became friends five years ago, and we remain friends now. She, like me, is a bit of a news junkie, so we have lots to talk about, and it’s a much better way to digest current events than my default doom-scrolling. She’s taught me, too, that small acts of generosity can have profound and long-lasting impacts, and reminds me to be unselfish.

When the world seems to wobble on its axis, we can be proud to call this place home and feel the rumbling stability of compassion and generosity burgeoning under our feet. These are resources that cannot be bought, sold, traded away nor tariffed.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca