Did People During the Blitz Have Brunch?

Apr 16 / Jenn Wooten
In hard times, history comforts me.

During the early days of the pandemic, we watched documentaries on the bubonic plague and the Spanish flu epidemic. Something about knowing that humanity has been here before makes it easier to accept that we are here now.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how people have lived through historically chaotic times; dictatorship, fascism, wars, genocide, and the ever-present threat of deliberate, systematic cruelty wielded by people in power.

And I keep coming back to this question: How did they just… keep going?

Because even when we have access to resources meant to support our well-being, and we know those resources are not equally available to everyone, it can feel nearly impossible to actually be well when the world is in chaos.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not just from living through this current moment, but from the cognitive dissonance of trying to live a normal life inside deeply abnormal circumstances.

Did people during the Blitz sit down for a Sunday morning meal while bombs had fallen the night before?

Did they chain-smoke cigarettes? Likely.

Did they laugh at something silly? Fall in love? Argue about small things? Put on lipstick, take naps, and snuggle their children?

The answer, of course, is yes, because that’s what humans do.

We reach for normalcy even when normalcy is nowhere to be found. And somehow, that reaching is what carries us through.

Audre Lorde writes in Sister Outsider about the part of us that recognizes when systems are failing us, when we are being asked to normalize what should not be normalized:
"Within each of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine that orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all of our futures into dust."
That part of our humanity doesn’t get quieted by a good meal, a distraction, or even a moment of joy.

If anything, it is steadied by those things. So can we live “normally” when things are not normal, and is there any benefit to it?

Yes. And also, not quite in the way we’ve been taught to think about “normal.”

The Nervous System and “Normal”

We can continue to live our lives.

We wake up, feed our families, go to work, laugh at something dumb, fall in love, and argue about nothing. Humans have always done this, even inside war, famine, and collapse.

There is something deeply regulating about maintaining rhythm and continuity. It helps keep the nervous system from tipping into overwhelm or shutdown.In that sense, “normal” can be protective.

But there is a difference between living and numbing.

If “normal” becomes a kind of dissociation, a refusal to register what’s happening, then it starts to narrow us. It disconnects us from reality, from each other, and from any meaningful response to the world.

That version of normal doesn’t stabilize us. 

It fragments us.

Staying Human in the Middle of It

The goal is not to pretend we are well inside a burning building.

The goal is to stay tethered.

Tethered to the part of our humanity that refuses to perform normalcy under the weight of it all, while still staying connected to the things that help us orient to each other and to a reality beyond our screens.

That part that knows how to conserve our energetic resources when we should.
How to channel our rage into action.
How to grieve what is lost in all of it. 
How to rebuild something new in the midst of it all. 
And how to stay human.

May we hold onto that.

Even at brunch.

A Place to Land

If you’re feeling the strain of holding both awareness and daily life at the same time, you’re not alone.

Steady Inside is a self-paced program designed to support your nervous system through ongoing stress—not by asking you to disconnect, but by helping your body process what it’s carrying in a more sustainable way.

Inside, you’ll learn simple, repeatable practices that support regulation, improve recovery, and help you stay engaged with the world without tipping into overwhelm or shutdown.

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