The Pandemic We Don’t Talk About Any More

When we think about it, just a few years ago it was all around the place, yet it’s striking how little we talk about the pandemic today. It was a period of time that shaped every part of our lives. It impacted our routines, our physicality, our relationships, our very basic sense of safety, and yet it has slipped quietly out of public conversation. News cycles have moved to more catchy topics. Regular briefings have vanished. Even in our casual conversations we rarely touch it any more.

And yet, for many of us, the impact hasn’t gone anywhere.

The silence we maintain around it can feel confusing. An enormous event happened, a black swan we didn't imagine possible, it impacted us collectively and individually, and now it sits in the background like a memory we’re not sure how to hold.

A collective event with personal consequences

As a collective even, the pandemic wasn’t limited to one experience. It was millions of them, all different ones happening at the same time.

Some of us lost our loved ones. Some of us lost our health that never fully returned to what it was before. Some of us lost our jobs, financial stability, or a sense of direction. Some of our relationships became deeper, while others couldn't hold the pressure and fractured. Some families were torn apart by their differences where beliefs about what was happening would clash. Some of us discovered our loneliness is much stronger that we would have realised. Some of us discovered that our resilience is stronger that we would ever have imagined.

There was no single story and because of that, we aren't able to talk about it in one single way.

The quiet grief of things that changed

For many of us what felt the hardest wasn't necessarily the crisis of the pandemic itself, but rather the very subtle shifts that followed. The friendships that faded away, the change in our families and how the way we gather changed, the deterioration we saw in the relationships within our communities, how we lost trust in others and sometimes even ourselves, how we feel different within ourselves and how our nervous system is at the ready more often than before.

These changes don’t always feel dramatic enough for us, and we don't always label them as a “loss”, but one after the other they slowly accumulate. This accumulation then shapes how we move through and see the world around us.

The rupture in relationships

An example of a consequence that we don't speak about much is how the pandemic divided many of us. And I'm not necessarily speaking about politics, but rather about our personal experience. How we saw and felt about restrictions, vaccines or risk created rifts within our families. Some of us felt we needed to end some friendships. Some of us discovered that how we see responsibility, safety or community can be really different compared to others around us.

Sometimes those ruptures were temporary and were slowly repaired after the pandemic. But other ones became permanent. What's more, these fractured realities can be very painful to acknowledge especially when everyone around us and all around the world seem to be eager to "move on".

We remember, even when the world forgets

The life may continue as before and look "normal", but for many of us we can feel the difference in ourselves. It can be subtle, such as getting startled more often than before, having an increased difficulty to relax, a constant sense of vigilance that we seem unable to switch off, a feeling of constant fatigue, or a feeling that the relationship we have with being close to someone or being in a crowd has changed. While the world seems to wish to forget what happened, we keep the memories close in ourselves.

The overwhelming silence

When an event that had such a significant impact on our lives suddenly disappears from public conversation, it can leave us unsure, doubting whether the experience experience we had was real, whether our feelings are valid, or worth naming. As we no longer discuss it, our personal struggles can become even more isolating.

Of course, none of us wants to relive it, but many of us are still living with the consequences of those times. When unacknowledged, we can feel as if we were forgetting it all.

A shared event that we’re still making sense of

Upon closer look, we can see that we are still lacking the language to describe everything the pandemic changed. Many of us are still working out what it meant for the relationships we had, our sense of safety, how we feel in ourselves, our relationship to work, the impact on our communities and how we understand each other.

Some of us would like to talk about it more. Some of us prefer not. Probably many of us can find ourselves somewhere in between. We are aware of the impact the pandemic had, but we may not be sure how to bring it up and end up carrying its weight in silence.

Naming this experience doesn't need to be about reopening wounds. We are instead looking to understand and recognise that something very profound happened, and that its effects didn’t vanish when the headlines did.

Dom

Integrative Counsellor (Trauma‑Informed)

Specialising in Trauma, ADHD, Narcissistic Abuse, Burnout, PTSD/CPTSD and Moral Injury

Practising in Malvern, Hereford, and Online