As we continue through this unimaginable journey together, I hope everyone is staying safe and choosing to have a positive outlook on the future. I believe things will get better soon, but in the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy the fourth installment of the COVID-19 Perspectives blog where the goal is to bring the real stories of the common American family to life during this time. We are to the point in our adventure through the common American family perspectives to where we will now put our focus on adult or parent ideas on the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog post along with the next future post will address these two perspectives. I decided for this post, to first focus on the role of a mother during this pandemic. In my hopes of providing the best perspective for this type of person, I choose to interview a married mother of three children who are also involved in the health care field working as a manager at a skilled nursing facility. I was intrigued to find out how her perspective was similar and different from my past subjects. Throughout the interview, I could tell she was stressed from the life she both had at home and work, but there was something that continues to keep her afloat during this time of uncertainty. Looking back on my experience with this mother, I was surprisingly able to see parts of her story come together early on throughout the interview. Like most of my interviews, I prefer to start on positive ideas. Therefore, I asked her to list the positives she has experienced from this pandemic. Her response consisted of many things including being able to spend more time with family, having more time to do projects around the house, spending less money, and having time to grow or evaluate her faith. In other words, she was very thankful to have more time on her hands to do the things she wanted. While I appreciated all those responses, I was interested in her last positive regarding her faith. Quite frankly, this response is one that I do not hear very often. I knew there had to be more to this idea. Therefore, I kept this idea in my back pocket as we continued to move on throughout the interview. I transitioned the interview by focusing on the negatives that she has encountered from the coronavirus. We discussed that some responses may seem obvious at this point in the pandemic, but she continued to provide me with a very unique response. She responded with two main negatives. First, she said, "it definitely is a source of stress, just dealing with so many changes both at work and home". She went on to explain that her life has been much more stressful than it had been before the pandemic. I furthered the question by asking her where most of this stress comes from. She responded, "definitely work". I knew beforehand this mother was involved in the health care field so this response was very valid. Her second response to this question had to deal with her youngest child. She explained that she worries about him quite often with schooling transitioning online and not having enough structure throughout his day. In other words, she worries about the well being of her youngest. While her two older children have school most of the day, she is worried about the lack of attention he might be getting these days. This response was a clear path to the mind of a mother. I found this to be very interesting. There are many other aspects to worry about during this time of chaos, yet this mother and others alike naturally think about the well being of their children. This aspect I believe also affects their fear of the virus. The interview continued by me asking her my famous question of rating herself on a scale from one to ten of how scared and or fearful she was of the virus impacting her life personally. In this case, ten being the most fearful of the pandemic. She responded with an uncertain five, but what was more interesting was her explanation. She went onto explain that she has a healthy respect for the virus. She believes that no one is immune to the virus; therefore, all people should be wary of the virus' implications. Additionally, she stated that she is not one to overthink things and become worrisome. This aspect of her life she attributes to her faith. In other words, this mother is respectfully fearful of the virus, however, her faith helps resist the fear that may be associated with it as well. I immediately noticed the topic of faith reappear. I knew this part of her life had to be a major aspect of dealing with the virus. The interview consisted of many more questions and topics that I could not possibly fit in this blog post. However, the last question I ask all my subjects brought out the piece that allowed me to finish her story throughout this pandemic. The question addresses the idea of how she thought the virus was going to play out in the coming future. In other words, did she think it was going to get better soon or will this invasion last for many years? She responded with, "I don't really know and I believe no one knows besides God". By this time in the interview, I could see this response coming from a mile away. She went on to explain faith has had a major impact on her life throughout this time. Faith is what has helped her cope and have hope for the future. She believes that God is the only way out of this situation and he is the only one that knows when this suffering will be over. While this wasn't necessarily the response I was looking for, I did admire her for the faith she has in this situation. This is what allows her to trek through the stress of work or home and continue being the supporting mother her children need her to be. Whether you believe in religion or not, I feel we can all learn something from the perspective of this mother. Mothers around the United States are taking on loads of stress each day whether at work or home, yet they continue to have faith and do not fall short of supporting their family. I believe we all need to not only admire the mothers for all their commitment during this time of hardship but to also learn from them and continue to have faith in others along with the future as well. Having trust during a time like the present can go along way for any individual and can lead to less worrying in their life. I believe if we all worry less and have more faith, we will get through this pandemic together and come out better than ever before.
