I went into the pandemic pregnant. I had only recently found out a few weeks before the virus hit, so while everyone else was busy watching the news and debating on the validity of the virus, I was busy stressing about how having a baby would effect my life, my work, and my relationship. Let me put it like this, if Covid were an event in the movie of my life it would have merely been an extra.
But then in what seemed like an instant, the bit player in my movie became the guest star; As my office shut down and I was eventually furloughed from work, I now had all the time in the world to ponder impending motherhood and what that would look like in a Covid world.
What impact would all this have on my financial future? Would I even have a financial future? Thankfully my job was taking care of my medical expenses, but I still had bills to pay and at that time there were no talks of stimulus checks or differed payments. To put it mildly, the stress was REAL. In fact if I’m completely honest, I experienced my first bouts of depression. Please know that I don’t say that in the way people throw around having anxiety like it’s something you just catch merely by being put in an uncomfortable situation.I take the words anxiety and depression seriously and know there are people whose lives are severely effected by them. So when I say depressed, I say this with the full knowledge of what that word means.
If you don’t know me personally then it’s important to know that I LOVE to be out and about, in fact this whole blog is about my love of just that. I’m an extrovert by nature and get my energy FROM people, so when I’m experiencing stress or unsure about how to handle a situation, I find it helpful to lean on my village. Going to out to get my mind off my current stresses or simply talking them out over a bottle of wine are my coping mechanisms. Another fall back is connecting to the city (a visit to a museum, outdoor concert, window shopping) when I’m in need of a refresh, but because of the pandemic obviously I couldn’t rely on my useual strategies. Yes, calling family and friends was an option, but it didn’t feel the same. There’s something about looking into someones eyes while sitting across from them, as you soak up their love and positive energy, that a Zoom call just can’t replicate. So I woke up each day feeling powerless. Tack on the constant exhaustion from this pregnancy, and well “Hello depression it’s me Winter”.
I realized that the health of my baby was riding on how I handled these new feelings, and when I did lean on my village, I was reminded that those feelings could transfer to the baby. Want a constant crying, anxious new born? Well stay depressed and anxious throughout your pregnancy. While I’m not sure how true that all is, it was enough to move me into action.
When I’m feeling helpless, aside from the aforementioned practices, I also get into investigative mode. I collect data, educate myself and try to become more self aware. In doing this I learned so much about how I cope and that the ways I was coping in a Pre-Covid world were not always healthy. I quickly learned that I depended on a lot of activities outside of myself to self sooth . I didn’t have any self-care practices that involved just ME! Most of them were about distracting myself from truly feeling whatever unpleasantness was happening inside of me. If you follow the Enneagram at all (which I began to really read up on as a means of understanding myself), I’m a type 7 too the max, which basically means I look for ways to not feel unpleasant feelings. Which can then lead to destructive behaviors or coping mechanisms that aren’t sustainable.
I learned that I had been coping for so long and had not been able to just sit in feelings of despair and that even THOSE feelings can be useful if I allowed myself to actually feel them.
I learned that my phone had become too much of a lifeline and while I thought I wasn’t infected with comparison syndrome I actually had it pretty bad.
Scrolling through my IG feed made me feel inadequate because I wasn’t using all my free time to practice bread baking(seriously it seemed EVERY Influencer hopped on the bread breaking bandwagon), or starting that business everyone was encouraging us “non-essential workers” to start. In fact, my biggest accomplishment was just the shower I had to drag myself into each day. So, I immediately muted those bread baking, overly productive, emotionally strong “I’m taking over the world” IG accounts and followed people who made me feel good about just being able to survive. I also ended up putting my phone down and deleted the apps for a few weeks.
During the pandemic the pool at our apartment complex was still open. Thank God for that pool because being up there was also a lesson.
Sitting up there, I realized that my idea of “fun” was heavily manufactured and involved superficial things like having to drink to enjoy the moment, needing to be surrounded by friends and taking Instagram pics to commemorate the day. I wasn’t able to fully unplug and be present. While I stewed in my inability to have fun, I observed my boyfriend recharge and relax by simply drawing in his sketch pad. His son even taught me a lesson about true peace and happiness as he bounced happily back and forth from the hot tub to the pool. It made me realize how hard it was for me to live in that moment,the sunshine, the breeze and all of the other awesome things I was letting pass me by because I’d been so dependent on what I’d conditioned myself to believe fun should be.
While watching my boyfriend blissfully creating I learned that I need a hobby. Aside from my love of reading I don’t have an activity that puts me in the zone and recharges me. My boyfriend got me a coloring book and let me have his old markers and pencils and that was soothing. I’m still on the search to find “my thing” and add more soothing hobbies to my list.
I believe being in a relationship during this pandemic has the ability to break or make that relationship stronger. I don’t believe that anyone cohabiting during Covid can come out the same way they went in.It HAD to change you or bring to light elements of the relationship that you may have never considered without it.
During Covid, my partner became a true source of stability for me. He’s an artist and I’m the nine to fiver so I always thought I was the stable one. But because he’s an artist and essentially an entrepreneur he’s always had to hustle. As I sat on the couch paralyzed by fear about our future, he was working hard every single day to provide for our growing family. I was listening to an episode of the podcast “This American Life” that summed up our experience perfectly. The story was about a woman who had been labeled the “damaged” one in the relationship because she’d dealt with a lot of childhood trauma. However those issues had built a resolve that then helped her get through the pandemic. Because she learned how to deal with uncertainty and fear as a child, those lessons were what she relied on to thrive and were exactly what her boyfriend was facing. Boyfriend on the other hand, was majorly struggling. After having been seen as the emotionally stable half of the relationship, he was now overwhelmed with worry and leaned on her for support. That story stuck with me because it was the exact dynamics of my relationship. I was seen as more stable and secure because of my work but when the shit hit the fan that work was not our saving grace it was actually my boyfriends. His calm, his resilience and ability to look for opportunity where I couldn’t see any made me reevaluate the roles we’d become accustomed to playing in this relationship and helped us to thrive.
The biggest lesson so far has been that life is truly working for me and not against me. First I’d like to say that I don’t want to diminish the absolute hell that others have experienced at the hands of this virus. I can’t even imagine losing someone I love to Covid-19 or of getting the virus myself. But since this is a post about what I’m learning, I have to be honest when I say that I’ve learned that no matter what life seems to throw at me, it is always working in my best interest.
Because of this pandemic I was able to be still and learn all the lessons mentioned above, and with the added pregnancy I’ve had to do the necessary work of resolving emotional issues that I didn’t even realize were a “thing”. Being pregnant also meant I had to be 100% sober as I was resolving them.
My work has also been positively impacted. Because we’ve had to work from home and it’s been successful, my company, (who was initially against the idea ), has decided that this has turned out to be a successful endeavor that should have been implemented a long time ago. Working from a distance has proven to be worthwhile enough to continue even after life goes “back to normal”.
The good that has come from this tough time has brought me closer to myself, my partner and this life growing inside me. It has reminded me of my resilience and that I’m always going to have work to do on myself, but that I’m also strong, emotionally intelligent enough to handle it and most importantly I’ve created a life to be proud of.