Because We're Girls: Mental Health and Inner Strength During COVID
4 AFAB young people stand in a field of green grass, linking arms above their heads and creating hearts with their hands.
By. Katherine Turner
The pressure on my neck increased, making breathing more difficult and uncomfortable. Panic blossomed inside my chest, and my pulse rapidly increased as my eyes frantically scanned the dark space around me. Focusing, I inhaled slowly as I staggered across the room, turning my attention to my abdomen, though the pressure against my chest and torso meant I couldn’t breathe as deeply as I wanted. When my lungs were as full as they could get, I released the air as slowly as I could and started again. By the time that second breath had left my lungs, I’d reached my destination and fell into the chair waiting there.
Another sob escaped my daughter’s small body and her arms tightened further around my neck. “It’s okay, sweetie, mommy’s right here. I’ve got you love bug,” I whispered into her ear.
The panic flashed again, but I was able to arrest it as I started to rock, reaching behind me to the blanket draped across the back of the chair, and wrapping it around my daughter. I knew that in about ninety seconds her cries would start to calm and quiet; shortly after, she would shift, releasing the death grip her arms and legs had on me. And a few rounds of her bedtime song later, I knew she would stop crying as she started to doze.
I knew these things because this was the third time it had happened that week.
The night had started like any other over the past six weeks since schools had closed and the state was put under a shelter-in-place order. The bedtime routine had once been entirely predictable; now, it always threatened to unravel, like it had that night.
“I don’t feel loved, mama. I feel like no one likes me.”
I tried everything I could think of to convince her otherwise. I assured her that she was cherished, listing out all her family members who loved her, starting with her dad, younger sister, and me. I promised her that she was well-liked, too, that we all enjoyed spending time with her and playing with her. As the whispered words crossed my lips, however, my mind was kicked into overdrive, analyzing every second of the day to identify every way in which I felt her dad and I had failed her.
See, in addition to caring for our three- and five-year-old daughters, we were both working. And the constant pull of our jobs to complete the same amount of work in fewer hours combined with the opposing force of trying to make sure our kids were exercised, had ways to express their creativity, completed their schoolwork, and didn’t spend too much time in front of a screen was wearing on us. The seeming regression of our daughters’ development as they resorted to behavior patterns and coping mechanisms of their younger selves, meaning they listened less and frenzied more, was wearing on us.
And under everything was my anxiety, deeply rooted in a traumatic childhood of abuse and neglect, which was suddenly increasing in severity. My daily mental health routine of yoga and a solitary walk fell by the wayside as exhaustion took over from working late followed by sleepless nights of comforting crying children as they began to have frequent nightmares. As my tiredness grew, my in-the-moment anxiety management techniques began to fail me. I watched, feeling helpless, weak, and out of control, as I became short-tempered and the frequency of my panic attacks surged.
My husband fared no better, working sometimes until the wee hours of the morning, getting perhaps a few hours’ sleep before waking to start all over again. As a government contractor, his firm was mostly unaffected by the shelter-in-place order. Then, the demands of his job increased as his projects neared critical delivery dates, intensifying his anxiety and reducing his physical and emotional availability.
Just when it seemed matters couldn’t get any worse, the job security I’d found so comforting vanished as my firm made its first mention of layoffs. And the back-up plan we’d had in case of job loss? It was disappearing before our eyes as the stock market plummeted. If I was laid off in six months, we’d quickly find ourselves unable to pay our bills, and now we were scrambling to find a new safety net.
Then my cousin’s husband, a nurse working in a COVID-19 testing center in Washington, D.C., got sick. We waited on edge for updates on his progress, knowing he was weathering the illness alone; his wife—my cousin—is also a nurse, and since the pandemic arrived, they and their six-year-old daughter had been living apart. The risk of infection had been too great to stay together while the virus raged. I remember the feeling of helplessness, confusion, and pain I had as a young child about the same age after being abandoned by my biological parents. My mind wandered often to my niece, hoping she will be okay when this is over and wishing there was something I could do.
Only days later, my close friend—who’d been assured her job was secure—was laid off unexpectedly. She was provided a severance package on paper, but her employer wasn’t sure they even had enough cash to make payroll that week. She’d only relatively recently gotten her feet under her after escaping an abusive marriage and facing significant repair bills for an aging house before this blow. My friend confessed that for several days after she lost her job, she felt so beat down that she contemplated suicide. As she spoke, my mind raced between trying to find a way to help and feeling like I’d failed because there wasn’t much I could really do. My heart ached for her as I was thrust back to my own past, remembering those feelings of despair and utter helplessness, the feeling that you can take no more, that led to my own suicide attempt as a teen.
Still, we have a lot to be thankful for, a fact my husband and I remind ourselves of often. Though as I lay there rocking my daughter, I struggled to recall even one, my thoughts instead tethered to all the situations I had no control over, filling me with a sense of weakness and helplessness and impotent frustration. But I knew those feelings would accomplish nothing. Instead, I needed to focus on finding those things I could control, and hold on to those moments of normalcy that still existed.
I tucked my daughter into bed and kissed her forehead, filled with new resolve.
“I love you, sweetheart,” I whispered, though I knew she was already asleep. “Tomorrow’s a new day.”
***
For a while after COVID arrived, I longed to go grocery shopping every week. Like most people, I feel a near-constant desperation for a change of scenery, almost frantic for even the five minutes it takes to drive there to be alone with my thoughts. To just take a deep breath and let it out, knowing no one is about to ask for something or start fighting or get upset. I wanted to wave and say hello to the faces that have become familiar over the last few years of shopping in the same store, to chat with the folks who will ask how the kids are doing.
However, this idyllic experience became more fantasy than reality. Yes, I drive alone with my thoughts, but that’s where the similarity ends. I park my car, mindful to leave an empty parking space between my car and the next—a habit I picked up after receiving dirty looks from other shoppers when I was parked next to them. Before I exit my car, I secure my handmade double-layered cotton mask around my face and start breathing with my upper lip stuck slightly out—if I don’t, my glasses fog and I can’t see. I spend a moment to take a few breaths, a way of “proving” to myself that I can breathe just fine if I’m breathing slowly and not talking, something I’d discovered a few weeks before at my daughter’s pediatrician appointment, an event that prompted yet another panic attack when I found myself struggling with the sensation of suffocation after reading a book to her through the mask.
After I walk in the first set of doors at the store, I use a sanitizing wipe to clean any area of the cart I’ll be touching, set down my purse and re-usable shopping bags, and pull out my grocery list and pen. The first thing I notice as I enter the second set of doors is the darkened in-store Starbucks to the left—usually teeming with customers—followed immediately by the gaping holes in the produce section. Produce was something I rarely had trouble finding, but now shortages are more common.
Empty green produce bins pictured on a wood shelf in a grocery store.
The next thing I notice is the facemasks; most people are wearing them. But there’s something about it that’s unsettling, and my heart starts to race. As my heart rate increases, so does my breathing. Suddenly my glasses are foggy and I’m desperately fighting the urge to rip my mask off to make it easier to draw in air. I pretend to study the fruit in front of me until I can slow my heart and my breathing. Once I’m ready, I continue to search for what I need. This time, though, I keep my head down and try to avoid looking at anyone else.
My progress is slowed by the number of substitutions I’m trying to make in the moment because so many items are out of stock, and then I realize I need to turn back for something I now need that wasn’t originally on my list.
I turn down an aisle, noting there’s another shopper at the far end. Aside from acknowledging their presence, however, I’m unconcerned—the only thing I need from this aisle is about fifteen feet from where I’ve entered, and I plan to exit the aisle the way I came. The person on the far end, however, looks up and pauses when they see me. We are easily thirty or forty feet apart, but they back their cart out of the aisle anyway and glare at me until I leave. When I realize what’s happening, my stomach clenches and I feel an intense urge to abandon my cart and run from the store. I want to call out that I wasn’t going to endanger them, that even if I was sick, they couldn’t get it from me while I was wearing a mask and that far away.
In another aisle is a couple without masks, chatting and squeezing past people as if this ultra-contagious disease doesn’t exist. As they pass, I turn my head in the opposite direction and hold my breath, hoping they aren’t unknowingly infected and spreading the virus. My chest caves in immediately with mortification at my own thoughts, at my automatic suspicion of another human being. I abhor that kind of behavior, and I hate myself momentarily.
But self-hatred is quickly replaced by anger as I think about their cavalier behavior; I want to tell them to go to someplace like New York City or Washington, DC, to see the devastation the virus is causing. See how families are being destroyed by death and how others are struggling to survive. Shout at them that bucking the safety guidelines is a slap in the face to people like my cousins whose families are ripped apart while they are risking their own lives every day to save others.
But I say nothing, instead finishing my shopping and rushing to the self-checkout where the line is shorter. I move from one social-distancing floor marker to the next until a register is available.
I detect a glare in my direction as I pull out my reusable shopping bags and open them onto the platform, and I suddenly wonder if I’ve made a mistake. Should I be using the plastic bags at the store? Would that be safer? The thought hadn’t occurred to me—using my own sturdy bags is simply second nature. I decide that any damage is already done because the bags are on the platform by now, and I scan my groceries as quickly as possible.
I pay with my debit card, punching in my PIN over the plastic that’s been secured around the machine. As the payment processes, I lift my bags into my cart, then turn to grab my receipt. The employee assigned to the self-checkout area is already headed my way with a disposable paper towel and bottle of disinfectant spray as I stuff my receipt into my purse. Instead of telling me to have a nice day like they used to, they simply nod their head slightly in my direction before looking away.
After unloading my groceries into my trunk, I push the cart to the cart return and hurry back to my car. The second the door is closed, I rip off my mask and take a quick, deep breath as I fight the tears that begin welling in my eyes. Stabbing the ignition button, I blink rapidly to clear the tears before they fall.
By the time I pull into my driveway a few minutes later, I’m exhausted. I want to scream and cry and do it in solitude. But I know that within minutes of walking in the door, my husband will need to get back to work, and I need to have a plan in place for what I’m going to do with the kids for the next few hours. I had ideas before I left to shop, but now I can’t recall a single one as my mind struggles to abandon the replay of my shopping experience that’s now on a constant loop.
“You okay?” my husband asks.
I shake my head, feeling weak and fragile because I’m fighting tears again.
***
A few days after that grocery outing, I headed outdoors with my girls shortly after breakfast. My husband had gotten them each a little kick scooter, and the only thing the kids had wanted to do since was practice riding them. As we broke through a section of the walking path from the woods and into the bright sunshine, the sky a vivid blue and littered with fluffy white clouds, my three-year-old said, “Look at me, mama!”
“I know! You’re doing such a great job,” I replied, watching as she balanced on one foot for several seconds, a vast improvement over the day before.
“I’m getting better!”
“Yes, you are, sweetheart.”
“It’s because I’m strong! And I’m a girl!”
“And we’re persisting,” my five-year-old chimed in.
“Mmm-hmm,” I replied.
“You’re a girl, too, mama. You’re strong, too!” my youngest shouted with a wide grin.
I couldn’t help grinning back at their enthusiasm as I felt renewed optimism and determination fill my chest. She’s right—I am strong.
“That’s right, sweeties. We’re strong, we persist, and we can do anything. Because we’re girls.”
Katherine Turner is pictured, smiling and wearing a white/cream sweater. She sits in front of a brick wall and some greenery. She has shoulder length brown wavy hear and wears black framed glasses.
Katherine Turner is an editor, sensitivity reader, and author of both fiction and nonfiction works about life after trauma and abuse. She also blogs about mental health, vulnerability, and compassion on her website, kturnerwrites.com.