August 9 is the day that millions of Scots have hoped for since the start of lockdown in March last year.
Remember when we thought it might only last a few weeks or months?
But here we are, more than a year on, and Freedom Day is only seven weeks away.
Politicians have taken the centre ground during this crisis as we relied on them to make decisions which they didn’t always get correct.
But the Freedom Day victory on August 9 is one for ordinary people.
They are the ones who have followed the rules, put their livelihoods at stake, family events on hold, worked while simultaneously teaching children and being isolated from loved ones.
But it was done with trust for the common good.
There’s been lots of setbacks and tragedy on the way – loved ones, educations and jobs lost.
In some ways, there will be no going back to normal. Like ice blocks thawing out of the fridge, many of us will not feel the full emotional, social and financial effects of 18 months of enforced isolation for some time to come.
Yet, we will have prevailed. With vaccines, with joint effort, with communal buy-in to protect ourselves and others, we have hopefully seen ourselves through this generation’s great pandemic.
The brutality of Covid has been a lesson to us all, showing us what is really important in our lives – family, friendship and freedom.
Better days ought to be ahead of us because we have pulled through this together.
