One of my dance students recently asked how Covid-19 is like Hurricane Katrina. If you aren’t familiar, Katrina was a big ole storm that pretty much wiped out New Orleans as we knew it.

But here is the key phrase – “As we KNEW it.”

I was 20 years old, and the world was my oyster. My whole life was ahead of me, with no husband and kids to worry about. I didn’t have a career yet – just an idea of what I thought I might want to do. I was teaching dance classes in my dance studio and competing in regional dance events. Still in college, I was just plugging away until I could go to law school. That was the plan.

But oh how life threw me a curve ball. I am a firm believer in God (the universe, source, spirit, whatever) shaking things up and getting us back on track. I can hear the GPS in my head saying “recalculating,” and I know it’s just a matter of time before we are put on a course that makes more sense. While it certainly shouldn’t happen by wiping out an entire city, the slate was made clean and the paths are clearer because all the noise is gone.

Instead of going to law school, at my young and naive age I opened a dance studio.

It was my passion. I wasn’t technically proficient. Other dancers I knew had professional contacts, but I didn’t. In fact, my teacher pretty much kept to herself and didn’t venture out. (I realized later in life that her extreme shyness and severe anxiety was actually the antithesis of what a business owner traditionally looks like. But she forged ahead. God, what a strong boss b$tch!) But I had passion, and I’ve learned that passion is a much bigger drive than talent.

So here we are, 14(ish) years later, and I’m still a proud and successful studio owner. No law degree (sorry mom), but happy…well, as happy as I think one can be in their career. Sure, there’s ups and downs. But I never doubt my life choice.

And here comes the next big shake up…Covid-19.

The Coronavirus or Covid-19 (what are we calling her these days?) is a “slippery” virus that mutates faster than we can catch up to her. She’s infecting older people now, but when will that change? How can we stop it? Instantly, I was having feelings of Katrina, being isolated from life as I knew it and trying to forge a new normal.

Key phrase again – “As I KNEW it.”

In a lot of ways, Covid-19 is scarier than Katrina. For the Hurricane, we evacuated to a town where WE were the minority, and people were able to help us. People formed a new sense of community and banded together without even knowing each other. The Walmart shelves were fully stocked. We could go to church and school, albeit in another state where we weren’t familiar with the ways of life. But it was still some sense of normalcy. We were able to physically see what was happening to our city, to our street, to the house we grew up in. It was horrible, but it was visible.

Covid-19 is an invisible terror. There is no end in sight to when our families will be able to return to school. There is no idea when we will be able to resume societal norms like going to the grocery store, hugging a neighbor, shaking hands with a colleague, grabbing coffee inside a coffee shop with a friend. Right now, what is normal involves words and phrases like “social distancing” and “cancelled” and “indefinitely” and “until further notice.” In watching the President’s press conference yesterday, people are being referred to in bulk groupings – the “older people” and the “young people.” The young people are irresponsible, irreverent, and unyielding. The older people are getting sick and, in many cases, dying.

So where do I fit in? How do I navigate this as a semi young person with a family and a business and this new normal to navigate?

I think it’s OK not to know. So far, I’ve done just about nothing at home. I cleaned my kitchen…kind of. We started seedlings for a vegetable garden with my oldest son (but I have no idea what I’m doing). I put on a bra and went to work to film videos for online coursework. I don’t even know what online dance classes look like, but it’s going to happen because I said it will. I googled travel destinations while I daydream about when Disney World will reopen.

Is this the path becoming clear? Who knows.

Covid-19 is for sure scarier. But we will recover stronger, with a clearer path of where our lives are headed, and cleaner (dryer) hands at the end of all this. We just have to stay the course and be willing to change things as we know it.