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Submitted by the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, written by Guy Occhiogrosso

As I write this article, we are in the midst of our Toast of the Town: A Celebration of Community Resiliency video series. As we conducted the interviews and produced the videos, I was inspired by the many people doing amazing work in our community. The Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce celebrated 15 out of many possible stories.

No one needs a reminder of how tough this past year was. Everyone — yes, everyone — has experienced shared trauma during the pandemic (and, on top of that, most also experienced some level of individual and layered trauma).

Among my biggest reaffirmations in this past year is that details matter, specifics matter and words matter. In a world of constant communication, information moves fast, and it is moving faster now than ever before. This makes me think of two well-known cliches: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” and “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Maybe it is time to rethink some of our collective knowledge.

As we are making our way out of the pandemic and through the economic crisis caused by the related lockdowns, I am hearing more and more about recovery. I am not sold on it. Our world is different; it has been changed forever. In the first three months of the pandemic, the U.S. economy’s investment in digital tools increased the same amount as in the previous nine years. In other words, our economy adopted a digital presence almost 40 times faster than it did previously. Many items that once were novelties — online ordering, food delivery, virtual meetings from anywhere, hybrid workplaces — are becoming normal expectations for our customers and workforce (especially now that our digital infrastructure has caught up). We have spent more than a year changing habits and expectations. I simply do not see these things changing — so why focus on going “back” with a recovery?

We need resilience. More than simply recovering our pre-pandemic status as a community, we need to develop an ability to adjust to crises and emerge stronger and more unified.

That is what resilience means to me.

Resilience allows us to be better, more equitable and more successful than before. Going into the pandemic, our regional economy was facing sizeable issues regarding housing, childcare and the workforce. These have not been solved in the past year; arguably, each has gotten worse, maybe much worse. We should not expect the same thinking that got us to January 2020 (prior to the pandemic) to lead us into 2022 and beyond.

Resilience means that we improve our desire to work together for the betterment of others. It is my hope that we abandon our “rugged individualism” of the past to build a shared vision and adopt shared success metrics. This would mean new policies and the letting go of policies that may have made sense previously. This would mean focusing on our future, our youth. This would mean understanding the nuances of our economy and workforce and not picking favorites based upon one portion of the community’s value statement.

Resilience would mean improving on the good of the past and recognizing and improving what hasn’t worked. Our growth management and housing policies have failed. We need a new plan. Our kindergarten readiness and fourth grade reading levels are disappointing. We are setting up 40% of our children to struggle and fail. We cannot force an economy that makes just the upper 20% of our community happy. Our economy should work for everyone, and anyone should be allowed an equitable role in our economy.

We need vision and leadership. We need to encourage and empower our elected leaders and policymakers to build resiliency — not just recovery. In addition, we need to live out that goal in each of our own individual roles. It is my hope we can get to a more equitable and successful economy and community instead of just getting back to where we were.

Where we were wasn’t working for many in our community. We don’t want to recover that. Rather, we want to build a better, stronger, more unified community.

This is the start of resilience.

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