Viral Pandemic Poem Was Written In 2020 Not 1869

At the beginning of this pandemic, we had no idea what was to come in the following weeks. As "stay at home" orders were announced, and restaurants and businesses closed, reality set in. It was then that I had seen this poem making the rounds on social media and was very impacted by it.

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

Usually when it was shared, a brief look at it's origin was also shared; it usually went something like this:

"History repeats itself. Came across this poem written in 1869, reprinted during 1919 Pandemic.

This is Timeless …

It was written in 1869 by Kathleen O’Mara."

It made perfect sense. In 1919 the Spanish Flu was at it's tail end; this poem seemed to perfectly sum up that time and correlate with our time. What we all failed to realize what that the poem, wasn't written by Kathleen O'Mara and it definitely wasn't written in 1869- it was written in March of 2020.

The author of this poem is Kitty O'Meara (I can see why people may have thought it was Kathleen O'Mara). In an interview with Oprah Magazine, O'Meara says that as she saw the news about the growing pandemic, and as her anxiety grew, she decided to write this poem and imagine the world that could be. In the following weeks, her poem would impact the rest of the world and end up being shared from a full spectrum of people like your aunt or Bella Hadid.

No one could have predicted how this year would have gone, least of all O'Meara. Her poem was just an outlet that ended up resonating with a new way of living.