Invisible scars: rebuilding self-worth
Moving beyond the ‘non-essential’ label
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” — Kahlil Gibran.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a seismic shift occurred in our collective understanding of work and worth. As the world grappled with an unprecedented health crisis, a new term entered our lexicon: “essential workers.” This label, crucial for our society’s functioning, inadvertently cast a shadow on many other professions. It brought an unspoken, yet deeply felt, trauma: the realization that some of our labor, our daily contributions, were deemed “non-essential.”
I don’t know about you, but I am still in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This event has irreversibly altered the course of my life, my interests, and my ambitions. And I am sure I am not alone. You can say it has shifted my life priorities. In a mid Covid and post covid world, this term still looms — ‘non-essential worker,’ a jarring reminder of our society’s sudden re-evaluation of value and importance of work. It’s a burden that, I suspect, resonates with many of us, a shared experience in a world turned upside down by a global crisis. Many of us are still not recovered and working our way…
