Our first week in lockdown has passed and we have survived. To be honest it kind of felt like a normal school holiday week. My husband went out to work every day and came home late every night. The children insisted on waiting up to see him before bed. We spent our days in the garden, we walked the dog around the block a few times, we attempted some schoolwork and we had lots of screen time. And I won’t try to excuse any of it or paint a picture of a happy family. Our lives have been ripped apart by Covid-19, and that’s before we lose any friends or family members to the virus. I’m not daft, I know that the worst is yet to come. Some people are still comparing it to the flu and saying it’s a big fuss about nothing. Most of us have accepted that this is a big deal, and we are trying to adjust our lifestyle to help the UK get through the pandemic. We cannot beat Covid-19, but we can try and slow it down.

Yes, I have become a little bit obsessed with BBC News. I have the radio on all day every day as it is, usually in the background while I work at home. Now I find myself watching TV news specials, trying to do “the right thing” to help people, and trying to come to terms with everything. We will not return to school now probably until September, although we hold out hope that we may return for the end of the summer term if our social distancing proves successful. Unfortunately it seems that there are people who blatantly ignore government guidelines and believe themselves to be apart from everybody else, and these people will only change their minds when they start to experience death and serious illness at close quarters.

I am trying to stay positive and cheerful for my children and trying to keep them entertained at home. I am also trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing for myself. Naturally my reiki course is on hold for the foreseeable future. While my teacher will try and hold classes through video calling, my children will not leave me alone to meditate during the day. I will have to do my practice when they are in bed. I tried to work on my laptop one morning last week and ended up shouting for just 5 minutes of peace to write a blog post. I don’t like being horrible to my children, and of course they are my priority, but what am I supposed to do for work? I don’t have a regular job, and my freelance work isn’t enough to qualify for government benefits. I am one of those people that fall through the cracks. I work damned hard every day, caring for my family and my home, and yet I only earn a wage if I submit to an employer and pay somebody else to care for my children (which I cannot do now, of course, due to lockdown). It is the age-old conundrum: Can I be a housewife and a working mother? Or does something need to change?

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