COVID-19 Coping Resources

Wellness Series

Check out our series on cultivating Inner Resources for Challenging Times. Each week we post a brief but deep dive into themes that may be helpful as we navigate these times. Shorter videos and other sources of inspiration can be found on David Walden's Instagram

Free Care Packages

On Being’s Care Package for Uncertain Times 
Sounds True’s Resilience in Challenging Times 
Calm App’s free meditations and stories
Tao Connect’s quick and easy relaxation exercises
Lizzo’s Meditation and Mantra to Promote Global Healing
Yo-Yo Ma’s Songs of Comfort
Michael DeMaria’s Musitations Podcast
David Wilcox’s Musical Medicine
Author Kelly Corrigan’s Vision for a Post-Pandemic World
The School of Life’s Excellent & Fun Videos
Our very own Peer Counselors’ curated Spotify Playlist

Resources for Black Students and Students of Color

Resmaa Menakem’s Racialized Trauma Course (highly recommended)
Institute for the Development of the Human Arts’ Intersection of Mental Health & Oppression Course
Therapy for Black Girls Podcast
Liberate Meditation App
Black Emotion and Mental Health (BEAM) Collective Resources
Black Mental Health Alliance Resource & Provider List
Black Men Can Heal Resource & Provider List
Black Mental Wellness Resource List
Brooklyn Zen’s People of Color Sangha (online)
People of Color Online Classroom’s Readings & Resources
Sista Afya’s Mental Wellness Information & Resources

Helpful articles and advice

Taking Care of Your Mental Health in the Face of Uncertainty (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention)
Keeping Your Distance to Stay Safe (American Psychological Association)

Crisis Lines

NYS COVID-19 Coping Circles (register here)
NY State’s free emotional support hotline specifically for the Coronavirus. 1-844-863-9314. 
National crisis line. 1-800-273-8255
National text crisis line. Text HELLO to 741-741.
National text crisis line for Students of Color. Text STEVE to 741-741.
National Trans Lifeline. 1-877-565-8860

Poems

Keeping Quiet (excerpt)
by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Instructions on Not Giving Up
by Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

For the Thousandth Time
by Mark Nepo

Even if an empty box
is torn apart, the air
inside joins the rest

and even if an empty heart
shatters, the love inside
coats the stars

and when a dove is born
its shell is done.

How much fear we know
depends on whether we live
as something torn apart
or as the air released.

How much pain turns to suffering
depends on whether we live
as something shattered
or as the love about to join.

We can live as a shell
waiting to crack
or as a dove waking to its song.

The Journey
by David Whyte

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.