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On my kitchen windowsill is one of my grandmother’s orchids. I brought it home after she passed away earlier this year as it wasn’t faring so well without her particular care and attention – I understood how it felt. Although I’m still a newbie gardener and have zero experience with orchids, it started to revive and I felt the joy of her presence again.

Last Christmas, my family and I were deeply ensconced in life in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We decided to visit family in the U.K. for six weeks at the end of January. And here we are 11 months later still in the U.K. looking out of our window on a bleak midwinter scene of rain and bare trees in the City of Coventry, a place that we never had any intention of visiting, let alone living.

If you had to sum up this year in one word, what would that word be? For me, based on what I keep bumping into regularly, that word would be ‘overwhelmed’. While the press often refer to the impact of these times as the worst in ‘peacetime’, these are not peaceful times.

Without so much of the ‘usual’ noise to distract us, many blindspots have been obliterated. What can we now see clearly? What truths about ourselves and our world have we met eyeball to eyeball? And what do we do now?

It is a frightening time for many with not only a deadly virus spreading around the globe, but also, leaders who openly flaunt human rights and democracy, with nothing served but their own self-interests. So where is the hope and where are all the great leaders?

This blog post was originally posted on June 10th, 2020 by Rebecca Krantz on her personal blog. Reprinted with permission from Rebecca Krantz and Dr. Adrienne Hampton.

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