How am I? I Don’t Know.

I have been asked several times by co-workers without school-aged kids what it is like right now being a working parent during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are curious and I would be too on what the actual day in the life is, how we are planning, coping and what the upcoming school year will look like.

Here is how I often answer the question when I am asked how I am doing with the recent announcement that my kids will be full time remote learners (again) come September.

I don’t know.

That is the only truthful answer I can give. Some days I might feel ok, some days I definitely feel like I have nothing left to give. I often just feel numb to the entire thing because it just feels like entirely too much. I don’t know seems like a perfectly honest response.

I have shared I was supportive of extreme safety measures being taken and sending my kids back to school, even during COVID-19. Looking into the unknown of what our days will look like balancing two busy careers with a second and fourth grader needing educational support is nothing short of daunting.

We don’t know what the days will look like, we don’t know how long this will go on, we don’t know if COVID-19 will start spiking up instead of trending down, if our kids’ emotional, social and academic well-being will take a larger hit than we are willing to admit. We don’t know if kids will even go back on-site for this entire school year or if we are looking at 10 months of a house being a home, a classroom and an office.

We just don’t know.

Moms, if you too feel like the only honest response is “I don’t know” when asked how you are, you are not alone. I think that is incredibly important to remember right now. It sometimes feels like we are on our own little islands left to fend for our families. But in a lot of ways we are all on the same island. Each family situation and dynamic is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this, but the pandemic pains us all and that is one big thing we have in common. The stress, anxiety, fear that many of us are experiencing; we are not alone in that. Even just through allmomdoes, there are resources and ways to connect to ensure you know you are not in this alone.

It’s ok to not know how you are feeling, but just know a lot of us don’t know how we are feeling either.