I know we were fortunate to not really be affected by the lockdowns. We just moved to my parents' farm for a couple of months and kept working remote, which I had always done. But 2020 is an aching time of loss as we lost 3 babies to miscarriage. In January, April, and December. When people mention 2020 in talks or homilies, I just want to scream. Because their funny memories of running out of toilet paper or having to stand so far apart in the line for the grocery store are so distant from the reality I lived that year. People try to make these takeaways or lessons from this shared experience they think we all had and it's just a millionth way that I feel I'm on the outside and put right back into that place of grieving so alone. I never realized how different the aftermath of those losses might have been without lockdowns. The next year when we lost another baby at 16 weeks, we were so showered with meals and care and checkins from friends. I guess I feel like my immense suffering and grief just got lost in the limited mental energy everyone had when being bombarded by news and social media and panic.
The lockdowns were really hard on my mental health. It was the second time I had suicidal thoughts (the first being in the aftermath of losing my first baby to miscarriage), and the first time I went to the hospital for it. I spent 3 days inpatient and it was awful and I never want to go back. Even afterwards for months I struggled to function as a wife and mother. I remember spending a lot of time sleeping and wrestling with overwhelming feelings of despair and internal pain. Like your publishers, I want to just forget about that time. But maybe you're right and we need to face it at some point.
Thank you so much for this reflection, and this space. Sharing these memories is so, so important.
The beginning of the pandemic was pure chaos for us. We started lockdown with a previously-scheduled apartment move, which seemed daunting enough in the face of the world shutting down. Unbeknownst to us, while we unloading a run at the new place, our old apartment was engulfed in flames. It caused several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage and displaced another family. It broke my heart; even though it was ruled accidental, I felt so much at fault. And it caused so much trauma to my whole family, trauma we are just now sorting out.
I feel so fractured when I think of the pandemic. I want to hold the quiet moments we got as a family and I am grateful for photos like the one our neighbors took from across the lawn of us at Easter 2020. Most of it is painful. I was the only provider that day in our clinic and had to hold up the hearts of our staff, myself, and our patients while we navigated who could come in the building or not and would I miss something if I can’t see them in person? Would they die? This eventually turned into a lonely burnout that I am still struggling to heal from. I can’t look at moments like when my parents stopped by but because we are all 3 essential, they feared hugging me in case we spread illness. I am so so grateful for the moment we knew a vaccine was here but so broken by the division of humanity over the last few years. I haven’t overturned a lot of the rocks to look at this but when I read about pandemic memories (Jessica Grose did write about in her most recent book) it comes out in tears. I do think we need to process and look at this somehow so we can heal. I appreciate the space you give. I don’t want to read about it but I do, and maybe we need that space.
Sometimes it is hard for me to imagine/remember the “before times” and how they were different because they were also before Kayla. Our family’s new normal involves a toddler we never thought would exist, even if she was secretly dreamed of for years. Four weeks into the covid lockdown, I vividly remember the telehealth appointment I had with my doctor in April to discuss my back pain and laying on my living room floor doing stretches to show off my range of motion. A week later, we had the surprise of a lifetime to learn we were 25 weeks pregnant. Our little one was a huge bright spot amidst the all that was happening in the world. She was an unanswered prayer and the new normal is much richer (and messier and louder and filled with less sleep but more laughter and wonder).
Thanks for this piece - I think you're wise to assent to the editors, re: the felt need of the audience regarding talking 2020 (and everything after) in your manuscript, but I'm also grateful that you are using your substack to give people a place to share their pain. I think you're striking the balance really well.
What I lost is pretty nebulous - it feels like all plans now end with "maybe!" from dinner next week to five-years-down-the-road family goals. 2020 set in stone that we don't know what's going to happen next... so, a loss of certainty and confidence, maybe. That said, I do remember a moment in March 2020 when I was holding our tiny family (including one newborn!) on the basement couch and thinking, "This is actually the only thing that really matters," and that was a gift.
I spent the first month and a half alone. My dad was in the nursing home at the time and passed away (from heartbreak, not covid). My mom had visited him for nearly 4 years several times a week, then the lockdown happened. He gave up, I'm sure. I immediately packed up and moved to my mom's (where I grew up) for the remainder of the pandemic. Due to the pandemic, we could not have a proper funeral or funeral Mass for my dad. The steps of grieving that my family had always relied were denied us by the pandemic. I still grieve that we were not able to give my dad a proper sendoff to the eternal world.
I am grateful for the 18 months that I had with my mom. Living back in the country, closer to nature, and being able to take daily walks with her dog was such a gift. My mom and I grew closer during that time and it was a time that I will always treasure.
I am still working through the grieving process with my dad. As we all know, grieving is a journey. I am thankful for God's grace in it all.
The pandemic started during my junior year of high school, and I really miss that time. It was the first time in a long time that I was able to be at home with my family. I’m still trying to reclaim the feeling of not having to rush all the time.
I had a miscarriage just after Covid started and then a few weeks later my mother in law was in the hospital for 6 weeks. No one could visit her. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor. We eventually got her home so we could spend the summer with her before she died that fall. Thankfully God is so kind and merciful. Because of the lockdown, I was in the first group of Blessed is She’s the Well with Beth. God was so present and my faith grew so much during that awful time. Definitely an experience in praying both sides.
You saw right into my heart Laura. Yesterday, 17 March, we buried my Mum who was 101 years old.
She died on 3 March which is also my birthday.
Mum went into care (excellent care run by the Little Sisters of the Poor), in January 2020. At this point she was 98.
We were still settling her in when we had the first Lockdown. We didn’t then see her for almost 5 x months. That separation, forced upon us by situations outwith our control, by the Pandemic, was anguish…..for her and for us, her family.
Although it’s early days since she died, the separation of death has brought less pain because God had called her. It was her time to go. Mum was at peace and so are we.
But we will always have the legacy of those initial, nightmare months of separation.
Please keep pushing, Laura, for people to face the pain and loss of those years.
My husband was sick from late January to May with what was most likely other viruses and Covid. His Dr did not know what to do for him and initially told him in March to stay home, because he may get Covid. Then when his condition continued to decline, he was told to stay home so he would not spread Covid. I laid in bed night after night listening to his wheezing, praying and trying to control the situation. After a long month of no sleep and stress, I had an epiphany moment crying in my closet, realizing that I was not the one in charge and needed to totally hand it over to God. I begged God to heal my husband but if He didn’t, I would trust that He would take care of my family. I felt so at peace after that decision to give it to God. Eventually, the Dr finally snuck him in for an X-ray and was able to prescribe medicine which helped him in a few days. My husband had a long recovery but is doing great aside from some residual lung issues.
The day of the first diagnosis in my city, I had a brave conversation with my boss and shared that I felt uneasy in my job. We outlined a slow plan to assess fit for the role which soon became a fast series of nudges to exit the role. My identity as an executive shattered in a matter of days. I look back and remember the healing practice, friends, and family that carried me through. I am ever grateful for the care and love that outshines those dark and painful moments.
I am a doctor. Patients died. So many patients. People I loved and cared for. My husband was a teacher and and is the biggest extrovert on the planet. He was miserable without his daily community. We got covid. We were so sick but afraid to ask anyone to take us to the hospital because what if we made them sick. I went back to work before I was totally well because I was needed. As soon as things chilled a bit, hurricane Laura hit and my family needed to live with us for 2 months. As soon as they left, we were given custody of a traumatized 2 year old boy (no, we weren't foster parents). I love him so much it hurts and am so blessed to have him and would never make a different choice but occasionally long for the DINK life that we left with no notice in the middle of all the other unprecedented events. One more spontaneous trip together would have been nice. But we had 29 hours notice before becoming parents and everything was closed anyway so where would we have gone. It feels like the pandemic was a bad memory and like 2020 has never ended. My therapist has a hard job.
I have a hard time untangling the changes before and after because we had so much change.
The weekend the world shut we had a newborn placed with our family for adoption. I never expected it would be just the 4 of us on our own for 3 solid months. After years of waiting ( 10 of infertility and 4 of those waiting to adopt) I had expected things to be so different than the reality we lived. It was hard and stressful but also so good. We had lots of time to bond with the new baby, we were given the flexibility to work from home or in the evenings. We had so much more time with her than we would have gotten without the pandemic.
We were so involved in our church and everything stopped so abruptly its hard to know what changed because of having a baby and what changed because of the pandemic and things are still weird and we feel a bit homeless and lacking the community we once had.
I still look back on 2020 and think we were the lucky ones. I had a baby a week before lockdowns started, but that meant that my house was already stocked in anticipation of a new baby (and my challenging post-partum). We already homeschooled and worked from home. We already had a large stock of herbs and medicines to treat sicknesses, so we had less need to go out or worry about doctor visits with sicknesses that came our way. We had friends who still gave support through that time. But I still had a terrible isolating time, feeling trapped in my home, being unable to brave stores because they sprayed so heavily with cleaners that it made me ill, and my husband lost his job at the end of paternity leave, then broke his foot, when I was barely out of bed with a newborn. The job he finally got destroyed his mental health. But what crushed me was that I had held out, getting through that pregnancy with all it's hards, telling myself I'd be able to be social more after baby was born, when I was less sick and exhausted from pregnancy. I'd put off taking care of myself in other ways, till after baby was born. To have been isolated for much of the nine-months prior to shut-downs and then drowning in stressors after, really broke me.
And honestly, that is the story I hear from every person I talk with this about. It wasn't covid that broke them, or necessarily even the lock-downs, but so many other life-changing challenges that hit them then, and they struggled through without the support and normalcy that helps one navigate those seasons. So many still are "just hanging on." And yet, like myself, they see how God is carrying them through. It may be "just barely," but the Lord knows that is enough. I don't think I will ever again have that sense of super-abundance that convinces me I can get by till later. I worry I'll always be holding on to what I have now, because the future is so unknown.
I have a young adult daughter, A, with sever anxiety and agoraphobia. During the pandemic I rarely left the house. My husband worked from home. I homeschooled and we picked up groceries. My daughter in public school went virtual. So A never had to go out and got used to having me home all the time. Three years later she still gets upset when I leave the house, every single time. She almost panics. And it’s easier for me not to go anywhere than to deal with it. I do go out, church and grocery shopping and an occasional dinner with friends. But it is an exhausting thing to deal with. Still.
I know we were fortunate to not really be affected by the lockdowns. We just moved to my parents' farm for a couple of months and kept working remote, which I had always done. But 2020 is an aching time of loss as we lost 3 babies to miscarriage. In January, April, and December. When people mention 2020 in talks or homilies, I just want to scream. Because their funny memories of running out of toilet paper or having to stand so far apart in the line for the grocery store are so distant from the reality I lived that year. People try to make these takeaways or lessons from this shared experience they think we all had and it's just a millionth way that I feel I'm on the outside and put right back into that place of grieving so alone. I never realized how different the aftermath of those losses might have been without lockdowns. The next year when we lost another baby at 16 weeks, we were so showered with meals and care and checkins from friends. I guess I feel like my immense suffering and grief just got lost in the limited mental energy everyone had when being bombarded by news and social media and panic.
The lockdowns were really hard on my mental health. It was the second time I had suicidal thoughts (the first being in the aftermath of losing my first baby to miscarriage), and the first time I went to the hospital for it. I spent 3 days inpatient and it was awful and I never want to go back. Even afterwards for months I struggled to function as a wife and mother. I remember spending a lot of time sleeping and wrestling with overwhelming feelings of despair and internal pain. Like your publishers, I want to just forget about that time. But maybe you're right and we need to face it at some point.
Thank you so much for this reflection, and this space. Sharing these memories is so, so important.
The beginning of the pandemic was pure chaos for us. We started lockdown with a previously-scheduled apartment move, which seemed daunting enough in the face of the world shutting down. Unbeknownst to us, while we unloading a run at the new place, our old apartment was engulfed in flames. It caused several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage and displaced another family. It broke my heart; even though it was ruled accidental, I felt so much at fault. And it caused so much trauma to my whole family, trauma we are just now sorting out.
Holding space for y'all. 🩵
I feel so fractured when I think of the pandemic. I want to hold the quiet moments we got as a family and I am grateful for photos like the one our neighbors took from across the lawn of us at Easter 2020. Most of it is painful. I was the only provider that day in our clinic and had to hold up the hearts of our staff, myself, and our patients while we navigated who could come in the building or not and would I miss something if I can’t see them in person? Would they die? This eventually turned into a lonely burnout that I am still struggling to heal from. I can’t look at moments like when my parents stopped by but because we are all 3 essential, they feared hugging me in case we spread illness. I am so so grateful for the moment we knew a vaccine was here but so broken by the division of humanity over the last few years. I haven’t overturned a lot of the rocks to look at this but when I read about pandemic memories (Jessica Grose did write about in her most recent book) it comes out in tears. I do think we need to process and look at this somehow so we can heal. I appreciate the space you give. I don’t want to read about it but I do, and maybe we need that space.
Sometimes it is hard for me to imagine/remember the “before times” and how they were different because they were also before Kayla. Our family’s new normal involves a toddler we never thought would exist, even if she was secretly dreamed of for years. Four weeks into the covid lockdown, I vividly remember the telehealth appointment I had with my doctor in April to discuss my back pain and laying on my living room floor doing stretches to show off my range of motion. A week later, we had the surprise of a lifetime to learn we were 25 weeks pregnant. Our little one was a huge bright spot amidst the all that was happening in the world. She was an unanswered prayer and the new normal is much richer (and messier and louder and filled with less sleep but more laughter and wonder).
Thanks for this piece - I think you're wise to assent to the editors, re: the felt need of the audience regarding talking 2020 (and everything after) in your manuscript, but I'm also grateful that you are using your substack to give people a place to share their pain. I think you're striking the balance really well.
What I lost is pretty nebulous - it feels like all plans now end with "maybe!" from dinner next week to five-years-down-the-road family goals. 2020 set in stone that we don't know what's going to happen next... so, a loss of certainty and confidence, maybe. That said, I do remember a moment in March 2020 when I was holding our tiny family (including one newborn!) on the basement couch and thinking, "This is actually the only thing that really matters," and that was a gift.
I spent the first month and a half alone. My dad was in the nursing home at the time and passed away (from heartbreak, not covid). My mom had visited him for nearly 4 years several times a week, then the lockdown happened. He gave up, I'm sure. I immediately packed up and moved to my mom's (where I grew up) for the remainder of the pandemic. Due to the pandemic, we could not have a proper funeral or funeral Mass for my dad. The steps of grieving that my family had always relied were denied us by the pandemic. I still grieve that we were not able to give my dad a proper sendoff to the eternal world.
I am grateful for the 18 months that I had with my mom. Living back in the country, closer to nature, and being able to take daily walks with her dog was such a gift. My mom and I grew closer during that time and it was a time that I will always treasure.
I am still working through the grieving process with my dad. As we all know, grieving is a journey. I am thankful for God's grace in it all.
The pandemic started during my junior year of high school, and I really miss that time. It was the first time in a long time that I was able to be at home with my family. I’m still trying to reclaim the feeling of not having to rush all the time.
I had a miscarriage just after Covid started and then a few weeks later my mother in law was in the hospital for 6 weeks. No one could visit her. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor. We eventually got her home so we could spend the summer with her before she died that fall. Thankfully God is so kind and merciful. Because of the lockdown, I was in the first group of Blessed is She’s the Well with Beth. God was so present and my faith grew so much during that awful time. Definitely an experience in praying both sides.
You saw right into my heart Laura. Yesterday, 17 March, we buried my Mum who was 101 years old.
She died on 3 March which is also my birthday.
Mum went into care (excellent care run by the Little Sisters of the Poor), in January 2020. At this point she was 98.
We were still settling her in when we had the first Lockdown. We didn’t then see her for almost 5 x months. That separation, forced upon us by situations outwith our control, by the Pandemic, was anguish…..for her and for us, her family.
Although it’s early days since she died, the separation of death has brought less pain because God had called her. It was her time to go. Mum was at peace and so are we.
But we will always have the legacy of those initial, nightmare months of separation.
Please keep pushing, Laura, for people to face the pain and loss of those years.
🏴
My husband was sick from late January to May with what was most likely other viruses and Covid. His Dr did not know what to do for him and initially told him in March to stay home, because he may get Covid. Then when his condition continued to decline, he was told to stay home so he would not spread Covid. I laid in bed night after night listening to his wheezing, praying and trying to control the situation. After a long month of no sleep and stress, I had an epiphany moment crying in my closet, realizing that I was not the one in charge and needed to totally hand it over to God. I begged God to heal my husband but if He didn’t, I would trust that He would take care of my family. I felt so at peace after that decision to give it to God. Eventually, the Dr finally snuck him in for an X-ray and was able to prescribe medicine which helped him in a few days. My husband had a long recovery but is doing great aside from some residual lung issues.
The day of the first diagnosis in my city, I had a brave conversation with my boss and shared that I felt uneasy in my job. We outlined a slow plan to assess fit for the role which soon became a fast series of nudges to exit the role. My identity as an executive shattered in a matter of days. I look back and remember the healing practice, friends, and family that carried me through. I am ever grateful for the care and love that outshines those dark and painful moments.
I am a doctor. Patients died. So many patients. People I loved and cared for. My husband was a teacher and and is the biggest extrovert on the planet. He was miserable without his daily community. We got covid. We were so sick but afraid to ask anyone to take us to the hospital because what if we made them sick. I went back to work before I was totally well because I was needed. As soon as things chilled a bit, hurricane Laura hit and my family needed to live with us for 2 months. As soon as they left, we were given custody of a traumatized 2 year old boy (no, we weren't foster parents). I love him so much it hurts and am so blessed to have him and would never make a different choice but occasionally long for the DINK life that we left with no notice in the middle of all the other unprecedented events. One more spontaneous trip together would have been nice. But we had 29 hours notice before becoming parents and everything was closed anyway so where would we have gone. It feels like the pandemic was a bad memory and like 2020 has never ended. My therapist has a hard job.
I have a hard time untangling the changes before and after because we had so much change.
The weekend the world shut we had a newborn placed with our family for adoption. I never expected it would be just the 4 of us on our own for 3 solid months. After years of waiting ( 10 of infertility and 4 of those waiting to adopt) I had expected things to be so different than the reality we lived. It was hard and stressful but also so good. We had lots of time to bond with the new baby, we were given the flexibility to work from home or in the evenings. We had so much more time with her than we would have gotten without the pandemic.
We were so involved in our church and everything stopped so abruptly its hard to know what changed because of having a baby and what changed because of the pandemic and things are still weird and we feel a bit homeless and lacking the community we once had.
I still look back on 2020 and think we were the lucky ones. I had a baby a week before lockdowns started, but that meant that my house was already stocked in anticipation of a new baby (and my challenging post-partum). We already homeschooled and worked from home. We already had a large stock of herbs and medicines to treat sicknesses, so we had less need to go out or worry about doctor visits with sicknesses that came our way. We had friends who still gave support through that time. But I still had a terrible isolating time, feeling trapped in my home, being unable to brave stores because they sprayed so heavily with cleaners that it made me ill, and my husband lost his job at the end of paternity leave, then broke his foot, when I was barely out of bed with a newborn. The job he finally got destroyed his mental health. But what crushed me was that I had held out, getting through that pregnancy with all it's hards, telling myself I'd be able to be social more after baby was born, when I was less sick and exhausted from pregnancy. I'd put off taking care of myself in other ways, till after baby was born. To have been isolated for much of the nine-months prior to shut-downs and then drowning in stressors after, really broke me.
And honestly, that is the story I hear from every person I talk with this about. It wasn't covid that broke them, or necessarily even the lock-downs, but so many other life-changing challenges that hit them then, and they struggled through without the support and normalcy that helps one navigate those seasons. So many still are "just hanging on." And yet, like myself, they see how God is carrying them through. It may be "just barely," but the Lord knows that is enough. I don't think I will ever again have that sense of super-abundance that convinces me I can get by till later. I worry I'll always be holding on to what I have now, because the future is so unknown.
I have a young adult daughter, A, with sever anxiety and agoraphobia. During the pandemic I rarely left the house. My husband worked from home. I homeschooled and we picked up groceries. My daughter in public school went virtual. So A never had to go out and got used to having me home all the time. Three years later she still gets upset when I leave the house, every single time. She almost panics. And it’s easier for me not to go anywhere than to deal with it. I do go out, church and grocery shopping and an occasional dinner with friends. But it is an exhausting thing to deal with. Still.