About My Book

Life has the tendency to take us to dark places. We feel loneliness, anger, fear and anxiety to name but a few. Our challenge is to have the emotional and spiritual resilience to face our storm. In her book Pandemics and Other P-Words, Karen Solomon takes us through the journey she experiences during these moments. The beauty is she does not leave you in the dark of her reality.

Review

A good book for me is a book that gives food for thought; this is to be found aplenty here. It is a feast to be able to identify with a fellow-introvert and it is a delight to find myself smile, grin and even laugh about fine word puns and ironic observations (I can depict a Pamzilla as if she could enter the office any minute now). Self-mockery as a style-tool helped me very well to settle the deeper thoughts in my mind to ponder and chew on and see the many layers of those thoughts. As a non-native reader of English, I encountered some unfamiliar words. Benefit of e-reading; upon click it gets explained so I even enriched my vocabulary.

Amazon (Starred Review)

Excerpt

Chapter 3

Post-mortems

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must

be lived forward – Soren Kierkegaard

My Plunge and the harrowing months that followed it forced me to sit down, lie down, slow down and stay down long enough for my inner dial to recalibrate. Seven months in I felt the stirrings of revival. Nothing specific or concrete nor anything I could fully compute, much less name. But it stirred up something better. I’d learnt how to be a little more present, so I became better with permission giving. To myself mostly.

It was OKAY to not be OKAY.

I heard and read about this a lot, but through my extreme sports off a stoep shenanigans and an unrelenting pandemic, I was living it. Rushing about, rescuing, delivering and doing were no longer my portion. My To Do list simply read: Be. And on days when I felt I was losing momentum, it read: Be Well.

It was incredible. When I stopped trying and pushing so hard, I actually propelled forward. And stayed upright, mind. When I stopped squeezing my battered brain for ‘something at least’, I discovered the answers came from somewhere else entirely. A beautiful, charming, picturesque place that felt fleeting. It was a place I’d once inhabited spiritually, occupying every room miraculously filled with my favourite things. But over time I visited it less and less often, always lured or instructed to go elsewhere. Someone always needed my help or something needed to be done, and at times I would work really fast and well so that I could return to my castle, my majestic peace-place. Back to the huge floor-to-ceiling library, French windows, ornate furnishings, rich and exotic wingbacks, chaises, and a fireplace with my favourite books, art, wine, coffee and good chocolate in every room. Warm sunlight inspired me during the day and blackout curtains sealed each day well lived as I settled into the comfort of a vast king-sized bed. Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven dispensed magic through the gramophone and their other-worldly musical gifts inspire my creativity. I often abandoned deadlines to dance giddily around the desk under massive crystal chandeliers. Knowing that when I sat back down, my plots and characters would be meshed in perfect union.

Some days the rain would lash against the floor-to-ceiling French windows so loudly and forcefully and I would see God’s fingers streaking His presence and His promise against the glass panes. The thunder roared and lightning clapped His infinite glory and nothing beats the damp silence in the aftermath of the storm. The quiet, resonant power of One who could destroy everything in one motion but who instead holds us and everything within and around us in perfect balance. It’s a power and a comfort that surpasses all understanding, and in that place it permeated every nook and cranny.

This is my Home called Peace, my haven, my birth right. But too many times I strayed from this tranquillity to dwell among the ramshackle, rundown, decrepit holes – shrapnel and debris of survival mode. It was called progress, grown-up-ness and success, but each time I did one thing that didn’t align with who I was at my core I travelled further and further away. In moments of extreme unconsciousness, I didn’t travel; I got swept up. At first I missed Home and would run back, sprinting from room to room to check that all of me was still in all of it.

Home. Like the first day of relaxed lockdown restrictions when we were allowed to move around for reasons other than buying food or working in essential services. A four-year-old Madison came to visit for the first time in months and I watched through my bedroom window as my mother went out to the car to welcome her inside. She was our regular weekend visitor, arriving with her bag of clothes and toys, but no thanks to the pandemic and the misleading 21-day SLA we hadn’t seen her in forever. They observed each other precariously like strangers, masked, not sure I they dare touch or not. Toeing the pavement, she looked at the house as if for the first time. It was the place she’d lived since she was four months old and she shared a bond with her grandmother so strong that most often I felt
excluded, despite my designation as chauffeur, butler, chef, personal shopper, mule, mediator, general dog’s body, and punching bag. Yet here they stood eyeing each other cautiously. As her parents drove off, she had nowhere else to go and took a few tentative steps through the gate. Eventually she made it inside and hugged us tightly with all the understanding a little person could have that the world had changed.

She wanted to play outside in the garden and I was quickly despatched to bring her little table and chair to the back porch. To our utter bewilderment she proceeded to bring every single toy she owned outside. She carried what she could and instructed us to bring the rest. Three wardrobe shelves and four deep drawers emptied onto the grass under the umbrella and every other surface she could find. It was somewhat unlike her, and our adult selves deemed a chaotic environment led to a chaotic mind and suggested she take only the ones she really wanted to play with. But on some level she needed to know the world was where she’d left it. Every few minutes she would leave the toys in order to hug us or simply touch our hands. I didn’t realise how much the lockdown had affected even the little ones. Somewhere between the cartoons, snacks and virtual hip-hop classes she’d missed something. We weren’t allowed out of her sight, having to check in from wherever we moved around the house. Or she would follow us inside. She parked outside the bathroom and when it seemed we took too long, she marched inside and told us so. Much later that afternoon, after the Barbies had feasted on ‘peetend’ macaroni cheese and she had sampled an assortment of snacks, she seemed more settled and more, well … at home.

That memory reverberates through me because I know the power of being Home. I recalled how often I’d left Home, either out of duty, desire or delusion, and as time ticked by, I rationalised my detours and deviance. But the day of reckoning came. There was a point, well actually it was the step, of no return.

Prodigal problems. I had to get back Home.

But this time I wanted all the unresolveds wrapped up. I didn’t want the yo-yo quick life fixes and thevicious cycles I was fast becoming an ambassador for. I was tired of being my own worst enemy and returning to Point Zero each time with loads of battle scars and ‘peetend’ insight. Trust me, I know enough psychology to make myself believe an inordinate amount of crap and could perjure myself in my own case. Easily, with my own hand on my own Bible of Inventions. I will swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And yet here I was, on a road paved with good intentions, willing my ankles to play ball.

Miss Third Degree Burnout sitting on the backburner of my own life, my extremities dangling in scalding pots of other people’s business and saucepans of insignificant other things. Firing on all the wrong cylinders; febrile fireworks turning into a red, tired, leathery Halloween caricature. All the tricks and none of the treats.

And it hurt like hell. Because it wasn’t Home, you see.

All I knew is I wanted to go back. As the light shone through, my head slowly cleared, some days were better than others, and I worked with my available reserves. I wanted to stop the stomach-churning déjà vu, the stop-start, rinse-repeat, three-steps-forward – 10-steps-back moonwalk that had been my modus operandi for more than 40 years. I can only repair what I accurately identified as the real problem. And then not repeat it.

My life lens needed cleaning.

Foreword

I found doors opening when I stopped asking the wrong people or asking people when I should’ve been having a divine consultation with God.

Karen Solomon – Author

Life has the tendency to take us to dark places in our journey. We feel loneliness, anger, fear, anxiety, to name but a few. Our challenge then is to have the emotional and spiritual resilience to stand up and face our storm. In this book Karen takes us through a journey in which she experiences these moments.

The beauty however is that she does not leave you in the darkness of her reality. She takes you to the place where these experiences start making sense in the context of life. It is in these moments where you feel, ’through the fog’, that something life-altering happened in the dire moments of your life. That is where your prayers are not a bridge over troubled water but rather a pathway through the tough experiences.

The work of Karen Solomon is not prescriptive in any sense but rather experiential. Having said that it will serve as a guideline for anyone “stuck” in the realities of life such as experienced in the time of COVID. Perhaps you may still experience COVID in a delayed sense or even as a post-traumatic event; then a read such as this will assist you in moving through your challenge.

By no means is this an academic intention but rather exploration of the challenges that we all experience at some time in life. This will serve as a guidance towards the open doors in our life.

My sincere congratulations to Karen; may your journey be one of further growth and adding value to the lives of others. My deepest blessings and prayers journey with you.

Dr. Albert R. Wort, Leadership Diagnostician, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

In The Media

Ordering Facts

Title: Pandemics and other P-words

Subtitle: How the Lockdown became my Launchpad

Copyright © 2023 Karen E. Solomon
Published by Karen E. Solomon using Reach Publishers’ services, P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631
ISBN 978-1-77636-412-1
First edition 2023

Pages: 202

Ordering Facts

Order your copy from Us Now to start reading

Title: Pandemics and other P-words

Subtitle: How the Lockdown became my Launchpad

Copyright © 2023 Karen E. Solomon
Published by Karen E. Solomon using Reach Publishers’ services, P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631
ISBN 978-1-77636-412-1
First edition 2023

Pages: 202