I see you wondering how many months you will have to entertain your children at home for. Wondering how you will manage the mess, the meals, the arguments. How you will hold it together when you have no time to yourself? You go from calm, to panic, to tears multiple times each day.

I see you wondering how you or your partner will work from home when you have no study and no childcare. I see you trying to be strong when you are worrying if you will have a job when all this is over and how you will pay the rent or the mortgage before then. I see you calculating how many meals you can make with the food in your cupboards and freezer. I see you wondering whether it’s worth taking your children with you to the shops, exposing them to potential germs when you fear that the shelves will be empty yet again of the basic food items you need. Those basic food items that your children will complain about and only half eat.

I see you worrying about when you will see relatives again, if you will see relatives again.

You worry about how your children will remember this year. Will they remember all the time you spent together as a family? Or will their memories be of missing friends and being shouted at for using too much loo roll? How long before they get to go out again and enjoy the simple pleasures of a playground or even a classroom?

You don’t know whether you should be forcing them to do school work at home or if it’s ok to let them play all day. You don’t know how to answer their questions about this virus. How do you stress the importance of hand washing without scaring them about becoming ill? 

These are strange days, uncertain days, long days. We took for granted being able to go out for a meal, to buy the food we wanted, even having that last resort option of soft play entertainment

We are missing birthday parties, family gatherings, weddings. We are missing seeing people.

But there are new normals appearing. Online classes, bonds between people through their computers, kindness of strangers. It’s there when you look for it amongst the madness. 

Mama, I want to let you know you aren’t alone. I feel all this too and we will get through it together.

My inbox is always open.

Kate x