Your Stories
We're telling your COVID Stories. Go to our COVID Story Submission Page to find prompts and share photos and your story.
We've included some of the stories we've received below. You'll find and excerpt from there story on this page, and we encourage you to click through and read the full story as well.
Stories may be lightly edited for content.
Luann
This awful virus entering our lives, ended up being a blessing in disguise in a way that it caused me to slow down from frantically busy work days as well as at home. It gave me space for much needed time for reflection on relationships, responsibilities and time for myself. I appreciate the little things now, and while at home last Spring, was able to properly care for our gardens of flowers.
Our youngest daughter, Megan was married last September!
Jennifer
My daughter was in California attending her junior year of college. Anxiety and fear weighed on my psyche. All mothers will attest that no matter the age of your children, the instinct to keep them safe and healthy is too strong to depress. So, on a lazy Saturday in late February, I started ordering supplies for my two grown children through Amazon. It never hurts to be prepared for something that may never come. Care packages of Clorox wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, chicken noodle soup, Tylenol, and sanitizing spray were dispatched. When I told them what was coming I got text replies with emoji eye rolls. I commented to my husband that it was hard to find sanitizer on Amazon. My husband, seemingly disaffected, asked why I was buying sanitizer. It never hurts to be prepared. He was incredulous, when he came home to find a large package of toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning supplies on our front step.
Read Jennifer's full COVID Story
Jay
I want to forget this time. I want to move on. I have heard of so much suffering and death. We were just lucky it spared the ones closest to us. So, I like to think that I will only remember this time personally for the time I had with my children, who I love so deeply and am so proud of. That they will move on from this time being more empathic and kind, and that no matter what they do in life they will be able to put themselves in someone else's shoes and fight for a just and better world.
Amy
IT IS MAY 2020. I deleted Facebook. I deleted Twitter. Craigslist is my new social media: personal nostalgia with an acquisitive edge. I scroll ads to see what strangers are selling, and come across a photo of two fat fluffy “lavender Orpington” chickens. Fertile eggs for sale, $20 for one dozen. I tell my six year old twins and they squeal: “purple chickens?!” They have to have them.
Our first pandemic family outing: we drive, masked and cash in hand, one town over — it’s the suburb with the casino and the Bass Pro Shop. The seller comes out to the driveway cradling her carton, and she exchanges her precious package for a mere 20 bucks. My voice muffled beneath three sewn-together layers of the kids’ old pajamas, I promise I’ll let her know how it goes.
I add the first song to my “pandemic playlist”: it’s The Traveling Wilbury’s “Handle With Care.”
The kids sing, their dad drives, and I use my phone to scan prices for incubators online: they’re high. I decide to build my own. Doesn’t every kindergarten teacher hatch chicks with a lightbulb and a cardboard box? My chickens, and therefore the eggs they provide, would be the product of my labor, not another purchase on Amazon.