Do you have a pandemic parenting story?
Join us on January 21, 12-3 at West Asheville Yoga for a Pandemic Grief Circle for Parents.
Over on instagram this month we’ve been sharing pandemic stories. We’ve been sharing what it was like parenting in the first days, months, and years of the pandemic and how those experiences are continuing to affect us now. The stories shared have captured the intense vastness of experiences from relief for a world finally slowing down to deep trauma and grief. For many of us our experiences landed between AND on both sides of the spectrum.
I think one of the hardest things about sharing pandemic stories for me is the shame around how it could have been so much worse. There was so much unspeakable tragedy happening all over the world that as a parent sharing “how scared I was” or “how hard it was parenting in isolation” I feel presumptuous in taking up space with my stories. Who am I to grieve in the face of such unbelievable tragedies?
But the truth is that in order for us to be able to hold space for our collective grief as a species we have to be able to process and move through our own individual grief as parents. Telling our stories is a way in which to do this.
The first days of the pandemic found me just entering the third trimester of an incredibly challenging pregnancy. In what was already a tumultuous time of my life, I found myself oscillating between numbness, panic, and an odd sense of relief. I’d been sick and shut off from the world for most of the pregnancy. So for the world to all of the sudden stop moving overnight, I felt strangely comforted. I was no longer missing out on everything. I was no longer what had felt like the only person falling apart. The rest of the world had their life turned upside down too. I felt part of a larger collective of people struggling, alone yes but also ironically now not alone at all.
My husband was home for 8 weeks. I no longer had to wrangle my preschooler alone. We hiked and napped daily, playing with our daughter and working on house projects. I was still uncontrollably sick and weak, yet it felt like bliss. Slowing down to a snail’s pace in those two months was one of the greatest gifts the pandemic gave us. Zach and I were able to identify with more clarity than ever what was most important to our family. It was a pause, a space to reevaluate, to take stock. It truly changed the trajectory of our lives. We discovered how much our family thrived with a slower paced life, how enriched we were by spending hours and hours outside. And yet as we felt our life settle we also were watching through a tiny phone screen as the world seemed to be spinning off its axis. It was a bewildering tension to hold.
Then right as the last weeks of my pregnancy arrived, Zach was called back to work. I suddenly found myself home alone with my three year old, still insanely sick and unable to go anywhere or receive any help. It didn’t take long before prodromal labor started and went on for weeks and weeks. Home alone. With a three year old. In prodromal labor. Barely able to eat and sleep. I’d write more about it except that I think I’ve blocked most of it out of my memory.
My anxiety grew and grew. George Floyd was murdered. The world became completely divided on how to manage the pandemic. The Black Lives Matter protests began anew. My due date came and went. Already in such a pivotal emotional state in the last days of my pregnancy my mental health seemed to implode. I felt lost wondering what kind of world I was birthing new life into. It wasn’t until I shut off all news and communication with the outside world for several days that my body finally felt safe enough to go into labor.
I benefited from immense privilege during the pandemic and chief of this was being able to birth my baby at home surrounded by my hand picked birth team. Something so many birthing people in 2020 were not able to have. My birth was everything I dreamed of with the exception of no family present. My sisters were unable to travel and my in laws who had planned to rent a house nearby to support us could no longer come.
And suddenly there we were with our newborn and 3 year old alone. Zach had no paid leave and only a tiny bit of unpaid leave after having been off work for the previous 8 weeks. A few weeks in I caved, begging family to come and help despite the dangers of covid. Asking for help is already challenging but then to be risking the possible safety of my own family and whoever I was asking? A nightmare.
In one hand I was in complete heaven. I was no longer pregnant and violently ill. I had TWO daughters and was well enough to finally be present to them. I did have some support. On the other hand I was so alone. No childcare. My own business lay crumbled in ashes around me. My husband desperately trying to make sure his company didn’t go under and working long hours. A terrifying impending election. Us buying our first home and moving. A baby that only slept while bouncing on a yoga ball. Recurrent antibiotic resistant mastitis. Anxiety and intrusive thoughts lurking in the back of my mind constantly. Trying to do the right/safe/responsible/healthy thing and having no idea what that was.
And yet what I grieve the most about that year really is just this - I didn’t get to truly share my newborn daughter with my community and family. So many people didn’t get to meet her till she was over a year old. All of her firsts were experienced in complete isolation. To have worked so hard to bring her into the world and to have been unable to share her magic with our family and community, that is the pain that I feel the deepest.
photograph by Hanna Hill Photography