RESILIENCE. a noun.

Resilience. By definition from the magical world of Google, RESILIENCE is a noun that means "the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity."

We are one year out from the date that the world shut down here in Kansas City. March 13, 2020. Friday the Freaking 13th. Caronavirus swooped in. We all went home.

We did it folks, we made it a year. We all remember how it felt. I don't want to spend a lot of time on that. We will always hold the pain that this pandemic has caused in our souls. But what I want to think about tonight, is how far we have come. Resilience.

I want to remember how people reconnected with old friends. How "reunion zooms" became a thing. I want to remember how we honored people who were working to save lives, how we helped our neighbors, how we shared our humanity with others.

It forced us to get creative in seeing people closest to us. Whether it was through the glass, over Facetime, through the door, on a driveway, from our balconies, or in a back yard, we found ways to do it.

It proved to us that we don't need the rat race as much as we thought. We CAN slow down, spend time with our families, gather for meals, watch tv together, and nap mid day. We can do ALL OF THIS, and still manage our jobs, all while wearing our pajama pants.

We adopted animals, lived without salon hair dye, we cut our own hair. We made Tik Tok videos with our kids and we learned how hard teacher's jobs are when we suddenly found ourselves in their shoes.

We learned to cook, sew, knit, paint, dance.

Our oceans began to heal. Wildlife flourished.

We found creative ways to celebrate big events. We had parades and drive by parties. We honked for birthdays. We taught our kids that they don't need huge parties to have huge accomplishments.

We learned the value of health. We saw the courage of our healthcare workers. We honored them as we watched them take care of loved ones, friends, family, and strangers.

We prayed.

We have made it 365 days since it felt like the world was ending. We have lost so much, but we have gained things too.

In some ways, this pandemic reminded us of what was important and EVERYTHING that we took for granted on a daily basis. It taught us that life can change completely in a literal day, and we can find new ways to do everything. It was scary. It was super scary. But we did it. We are doing it now. And we will continue to do it until we are no longer at risk.

I think the definition of RESILIENCE, a noun, should now read: "the ability of an entire world to be locked in their homes, away from friends and family, for months upon months and not wither. The ability to continue to get up, breathe, be thankful for health and family and friends, and again for health, and jobs, and Netflix, the Tiger King, for liquor stores that deliver, and for toilet paper. Especially for the freaking toilet paper."

This one seems to fit better now. Someone let Google know.