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Lockdown Journal


Over two years, from the very first lockdown in March 2020 to her final entry on 30 March 2022, Deborah Shepard kept a journal of her experience of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting five lockdowns in the city of Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand. Part historic record of the pandemic and its consequences, part intimate journal of the heart during a period of profound personal upheaval,  this book charts the experience of a New Zealand woman writer, navigating uncertainty and using her writing to survive. Throughout her journal Deborah intersperses passages of nature writing to uplift and grounds her discomfort over the severity of lockdown measures with a Buddhist acceptance of the central fact of life's impermanence.  Her journal entries bring history vividly and intimately to life, with a wealth of detail at both micro and macro levels — from daily domestic rituals that steady her, to an analysis of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Government's management of the crisis — taking the reader on a journey of what it was like to experience profound isolation during a major pandemic in a remote country near sub-Antarctica at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century.

Deborah’s journal is now in development for publication. You can read the first of her entries below: 

March 25

4/7/2023

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Picture
50 new cases of coronavirus in NZ
Global cases 372,757
Global death toll 16,231
A state of emergency declared in NZ
Lockdown level four begins at 11.59pm for a minimum of four weeks
​

Sleep is impossible. How I long to sink back into slumber and escape the mounting worries.
Instead, I climb the jagged waves and then crash. All night long it goes on. Ever since my old
life ended three years ago, my nights have been a storm at sea and now there is more to
contend with. What is happening? It feels as though the world is ending.

Nothing could have prepared me for this shocking upheaval to our world order. A state of
national emergency. Unbelievable. I think there has only been one in our history, in
Christchurch, my hometown, following the catastrophic earthquake in 2011. I thought then it
could never be as terrible again.

Tonight at 11.59pm a nationwide ‘lockdown’ begins. What is that even?

Family. My first thoughts are for my children. Their safety. Felix, my youngest has decided to
remain in Sydney for the lockdown. Though I’ve implored him to return, he is digging in. But
will the Australian government provide income relief for a NZ citizen, now that he can’t
work? I really want him here, not there. I want to gather my family around me and protect
them, but I have nothing to offer. Since losing my home, a year ago, I have been living a
nomadic and unstable existence. There is no room for extras in this small flat.

Somewhere I must find the strength within to accept that I am on my own now.

This morning, though, when I awoke the day outside was pale blue and eerily peaceful.
Opening the wooden blinds my eye caught a flash of orange, a small flag of colour, flowering
in the green hedge outside the window. Walking into the second room I saw across the
hedgerow and past a late flowering rose in the garden next door, the pale granite shape of
Rangitoto, steady like a sphinx, rising from a pale metallic sea.

Nature and its solace. It is all we have.

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Deborah thanks Rangimarie Kelly and Pikau Digtal for website design and artist Karen Jarvis for her image ‘Writers at the Devonport Library,’ (2023)
Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
​
Events
​About
Testimonials
What People Say

Media
​Contact
Copyright © 2023 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Writer's Stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
    • From Being Mentored to Book Publication
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact