Reflections on a crazy year

As 2020 is slowly coming to an end, I can't help but reflecting on this crazy year all of us have had. I know this year has been unusual for most of us and on top of that I can add the fact that our family faced some healthcare related challenges in January and, as everyone living abroad knows, those things are the hardest to try and navigate in a foreign country and this was before COVID even reached Europe. hen after a slow recovery in February we went on lock down in March and spent the whole Spring in our house in Bratislava, dreading getting Covid and having to go back to a Slovak hospital. In June school reopened and life seemed to be slowly going back to a sort of normal, although we were still awaiting a company decision about where our future would be. Late July we finally got the news that a new job was waiting in Switzerland and we made the swift decision to use what was left of the Summer holiday to move our family. Time obviously was not on our side so we left Slovakia with only the bare necessities and without the opportunity to properly say goodbye to our friends and the school. We were lucky enough to find the kids a school and a nice apartment quite quickly and et the end of August we found ourselves living in Switzerland again.

I am grateful for many things and among them are:

- We are here back in a country we love, where we have friends and loads of opportunities to go out and explore.

- We are all healthy.

- We have not lost close family or friends to the pandemic.

- We have learned so much this year: living with uncertainties; navigating a foreign health care system; how we all react differently to extreme situations and there is no wrong or right to that; how important it is to stay active and fit (this saved my sanity during lock down for sure, just going out for a walk or a run every day) and how flexible my children have been again.

What this pandemic has also brought to us is that so many learning opportunities came available online, right into the comfort of our own homes.Opportunities that were not easy available before!

That way I became a Positive Discipline Certified Parent Educator this year, based on the Positive Discipline books by Jane Nelsen. This method gives so many practical tools and in my opinion is a beautiful addition to the "How to talk so kids will listen".

I am obviously super excited about this and I can't wait for all of you to experience this too. So keep an eye on this page, online taster sessions are coming soon!

For now, I would like to wish you all the best for 2021, I feel confident that 2021 will bring us even more things to be grateful for.