Editor’s note: We would like to thank Gacia Danaoghlian, Writing Center Tutor at Lebanese American University, Beirut (Lebanon), for providing this piece. Interested in contributing to the Resilience Project at CWCAB? Go to our Submission Guidelines for more information.

As a social butterfly, I feared the worse for my psychological well-being when the lockdown for the Covid-19 was announced. It was indeed a great challenge for the Lebanese, who have already been enduring the horrors of the economic crisis that had overshadowed them in October, causing many to lose their occupations or have their salaries significantly deducted. The pandemic only aggravated the situation, and I wondered how my fellow Lebanese citizens and I would be able to survive our journey of unfortunate events.

As Lebanese, we are known for our resilience, and indeed, I decided to embrace the situation and continue to live my life as “normally” as I possibly could. I decided to find comfort in the only area I knew and believe in excelling: Teaching Writing. As online learning began to permeate our daily lives, I found myself entirely investing my time with my tutees. They were the reason why I got up in the morning and the reason why I slept soundly at night. As a Writing Center Tutor, I enjoyed helping them during their Online and E-tutoring appointments as they found comfort sharing their academic challenges as well as their emotional turbulences with me. I also found their resilience and commitment to academia as a source of inspiration to remain hopeful and refuse to give in to the torment the pandemic has caused the world. Moreover, I experienced, in a short duration, the rewarding and self-fulfilling outcome of what I invested in. I was showered with emails about how my academic and non-academic advice helped my students not only with their writing but with their overall dealing with the chaotic situation.

Some might refer to writing as the most challenging and annoying task, and they might be right at one point, but then, they often times forget that writing has healing powers, and it’s so powerful, you might even forget a pandemic.