Putting on a brave front; a reflection on mothering during a pandemic

We’ve all seen the statistics and reports: millions of women have left the workforce to care for their children and oversee virtual, at-home schooling during the pandemic. Those who kept working, did it amidst schedule changes, lack of child care, and Zoom meetings live from their bedroom closets.

It’s no surprise: much of the burden from the last year has fallen on the shoulders of moms.

Mothering during Covid, while employed or not, became all-encompassing. Sacrifices were made and routines upended as women soldiered on, one day, one shift, one virtual lesson at a time.

In honor of Mother’s Day – and to help fully appreciate the toll the pandemic has taken on an entire generation of women – we asked a few local moms to share their stories about the last year, what they went through, and what they learned from it.

Three moms with three different circumstances had one thing in common: being a mom during the pandemic required putting on a brave front, occasionally breaking down, but always getting back up. For themselves, and for their families.

Here are their firsthand, personal accounts.

Molly Feeney Wood is a mom of three who lives in Northport. She worked with teachers as a full-time literacy consultant, but her workload dramatically decreased when school shut down. Molly chose to keep her children 100-percent remote this school year for their own personal health and emotional well-being, and because of what she can do to support them as readers and writers. Recently, Molly has been juggling at-home lessons for her children with shifting back to work in professional development. “At any given moment, we are all on a Meet,” she explained.

As I sit down to reflect on parenting, or mothering, through the pandemic, it is Mother’s Day and I had a horrible night sleep because of my youngest, who is up kind of bed-hopping throughout the night and it is also his third birthday today. So today is Mother’s Day, and it is his birthday, my birthing day, and the reason why I am a mother. So I’m very grateful for that.

At the same time, I am very tired.

I recently read an article in The New York Times about languishing. And it feels like it will be the new word for 2021: languishing. And I’m definitely doing that. I’m not really high, I’m not really low. I’m just kind of fine, or here, or level. And that worries me a little bit because I want to be able to feel the joys again. And I want to be able to differentiate between these different feelings that I used to have. And have them again. Have a range of emotions.

I’m a little concerned about that because I feel like, you know, this is a year out. A year is a long time… maybe it gets better? But it’s not really that long and on the other end of it, it hasn’t really been a year of healing. It really begins now. We just left, or we are still kind of in, the horrible past year.

I’ve been concerned about my own emotional state recently because as a parent, you just get through it. You know something is happening and you get through it for your kids. So my husband and I kind of soldiered on, and put on a very brave front, and tried to reassure them and be honest with them. And, you know, be as safe as we can be.

And at some point you have to experience the feelings and you have to go through it.

I’m worried that I’m not going through the feelings and I’m languishing. And maybe this is just how I feel now.

But then yesterday I was cleaning out the garage and putting some things away. And I picked up my son’s backpack from last year and totally thought it was empty. And I picked it up and all of these things fell out of it. It was like thirty books from his kindergarten teacher, and a packet of fun activities to do.

And as I’m seeing it, it was so emotional. And I realized, okay, here are a few things: I am grieving, it will not always be this hard. But this is a very, very sad year to be a parent, I think. Because our kids have lost so much and there’s just a lot of fear in parenting in a way that hadn’t happened before. Or had not existed for me before.

And I just got so sad.

I thought about the teachers scrambling to fill these kids’ backpacks in a crisis situation. And then I thought about how far we’d come and that kind of lifted me up. Like, we made it. We did it. We got through it, together. But it’s just really sad to think back and remember those early weeks, and I’m definitely still grieving.

I don’t know the steps of grief, I don’t remember them. I’ve gone through them, but that’s maybe why I know that this will pass. You don’t live in grief forever, you will get through it and these are definitely still the early days.

And there’s this conversation about the “end of the pandemic,” and the hope, and the light at the end of the tunnel. But honestly, this is just going to change a lot of people. I think this is going to change a lot of people and it’s going to take a long time.

But throughout this hardest year in my parenting experience, I’ve also met other moms who are also exhausted, but also know that, to a point, what’s more important than niceties and the status quo, is honesty. And fighting for your children and fighting for a better world.

There’s something to be said about being “broken” or grieving or in this place. Because for me, it’s given me a tremendous amount of strength. I think it clarified what my purpose is and what I’m fighting for. And in all of this darkness, sadness and fear, for me, I found a lot of clarity and I found my voice. And I’m just not afraid to use it.

Jamie White is a mom of two who lives in East Northport. She works as a loan officer at Freedom Mortgage and quickly brought her office home when the pandemic hit; there was no real down time in her profession. With her 4-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son playing in the background, she took work calls and joined conferences from any quiet area she could find.

“I don’t work from home, I live at work.”

I have no idea where I got that line from, I did not make it up.... so I can’t take credit. However, that sentence has defined my life during the pandemic.

I am a licensed loan officer for a mortgage banker. Pre-pandemic, my life was chaotic, busy, a world of making everything work on the fly. There was no room for any surprises. I would be showered, professionally dressed in heels, literally running, throwing the kids out the door and heading to wherever by 9am. Training referral partners, lunch meetings, sitting with clients and then usually a networking event in the evening. Exhausting, but rewarding and slightly scary.

Then bam, March 13th. “Everyone take home your laptops, papers, mouses, screens.” Everything is shut down.

Now I can’t lie, my ignorance may have gotten the better of me and I was honestly exhausted. I thought, “I could use a couple weeks of downtime at home, with my family. Yes, I’ll work, but this will be nice. We will make banana bread and play board games for a few weeks. I’ll make up all the time I wasn’t home for my kids. Extended snow storm, if you will.”

Three weeks later. If I thought I felt guilt before, I didn’t know what guilt was.

Work was busier than ever. Mortgage rates were historically low, everyone was home, wanting to refinance or wanting to move and buy a house, and quick. Everyone had time to talk, all day, everyday. I was stuck between seizing the once in a lifetime “lucrative opportunity” and staring at my children behind screens all day. Telling them to be quiet while I am on Zooms, conference calls, hiding in closets while helping people figure out how to finance significant amounts of money.

I would get Facebook messages from my son, sitting six feet from me, asking me to take a break for family time.

It felt awful. So I would take a break, engage my family, then hear it - the ping ping ping - emails, texts, calls, and there is the guilt again, just in the other direction.

“Why not take a call while making dinner?”

“Sure, I’ll just bring the laptop in the bathroom while my daughter has a bath. I mean, I’m here, right? It’s better than before?”

It was rough. I would quiet my daughter who would sing, and dance, and laugh, rather loudly, and then think to myself.... “I am dimming her light, what’s wrong with me?”

I had a hard time, plain and simple. I learned a lot. I’m grateful for the lessons and I may even be a better mother, wife and loan officer for it.

Just some things I learned: People understand, know and appreciate the family in the background while you give them the professional attention that they need. It makes you human.

I am still learning how to not feel guilty about working and being a good mom, but this period has absolutely helped me come a long way.

I did not dim my children’s light, they did not become blue light zombies, we were surviving.

I am lucky. I stopped looking around at the world and time we were living through, and realized it at points. Overwhelmingly lucky.

Lauren Engel is a mom of three who lives in Northport. She is a nurse in the medical-surgical unit at Huntington Hospital and continued to work at the height of the pandemic, while seven months pregnant and caring for two children at home. When the pandemic hit, she struggled to find childcare, as her husband is also an essential worker. With the help of fellow nurses, family and hired caregivers, she was able to make it all work.

It’s been one heck of a year. It’s been a lot. But it’s also been a time for growth. You realize what’s really important as well.

We had to do the home schooling bit, which was fun (haha) , especially when we had to find childcare because both my husband and I are essential workers. That was a little crazy. Luckily, Northwell was very understanding about that and they eventually gave us child care credit and backup care.

So it’s just been a crazy, crazy year.

At first, everybody just shut down, which was scary because it was like “Okay, I have to be at work, but my children need to be cared for as well,” so it was tricky. There were a couple of weeks where everybody was like, “What do we do?” At first, a lot of nurses would say, “Okay, I watched your kids while you worked a shift, now you watch my kids while I do a shift.” We would work together. That’s how we made it through.

My husband works at National Grid, and the world needs electricity, so he had to be at work as well. So it was a lot of juggling. When the pandemic began, I was seven, eight months pregnant.

It was really hard because my oldest was old enough to know that something was wrong. I didn’t want him to be nervous. So it was hard to come home from that and then, you know, put a smile on my face. “Everything is okay!” That was really difficult. Because you don’t want to scare your kids.

Being mindful was important. Being in the moment. Trying not to think about the past or what’s going to happen in the future. Just thinking about the present, to just handle what’s on your plate right now.

Also, there was a lot of support from the community. My favorite thing from all of this was the school kids from around Northport and Huntington sending us letters. And they’re still sending us letters. Just seeing these little letters, I don’t know, that really, really touched me and kept me going. And the rainbows, the kids putting the rainbows up in the windows. That really meant a lot. I still get tearful thinking about it because it was difficult. It was really difficult, and to know that your community and these children care meant everything.

You know, a nurse is a nurse. But all of a sudden, we were “heroes.” So that really kept me going. And they hung up all of the letters and all of the drawings in the entrance of the hospital, so everytime you would walk into the hospital, you would see all of these drawings and say, “Okay, just gotta keep going.”

My third child was born last June. I came back to work in September. You don’t have a choice. You’re a mom. You have to suck it up, and it’s for your kids. We’d do anything for our kids.