Can you believe that it's been five years since most of the world went into lockdown to suppress the COVID-10 pandemic? The “Covid babies” will soon be starting school and the lockdown puppies are fully grown dogs. My daughter who was only in her first year of secondary school is a matter of weeks away from finishing school and my son who was just a wee boy is now a taller than me teenager!
I’ve come to realise that the period of time we spent in lockdown, distressing and bizarre as it felt at the time, was a catalyst for making big changes and improvements in my life. I have such conflicting emotions about the time we spent in lockdown: we missed out on so much and the pandemic was downright frightening. Yet (and I really hope this doesn’t sound awful) sometimes my family and I still look back fondly on our memories of lockdown and I know that I have lockdown to thank for giving me a nudge in the direction of change.
Before I go any further, I do want to acknowledge that for many people 2020 was a torrid time. A living nightmare for some. People lost loved ones, livelihoods and freedom. We were forced to give up the way of life we knew, cut off from friends and family. Thousands of people died and even today there are many people who still feel the long term effects of the illness.
This is a reflection not so much about the virus but about the lockdown I could never have even imagined experiencing and how it played a part in helping me to design a life I love.
The Surreal Experience of Lockdown
It seems completely and utterly surreal now to think that, as an entire nation, we were only allowed to leave our homes once a day for brief exercise or for essential trips. Seeing empty motorways, deserted streets and masks everywhere. The masks! I remember feeling quite emotional the first time I donned one of those blue masks. It felt like yet another step removed from everyone I came into (socially distanced!) contact with.
It’s hard to imagine now crossing roads to avoid being too close to people and wiping down everything we had bought at the supermarket. I don't think I've ever baked as much as I did in 2020 and let's not even mention the DIY haircuts!
I remember all the speculation about a possible lockdown and rumours about schools closing. I had lunch with some teacher friends in early March and we discussed the likelihood of school closures. We came away thinking that it looked likely that schools would close early for the Easter holidays before re-opening in April. Little did we know!
My First Experience of The Virus
As press coverage grew, reporting rising cases of the virus and bus loads of people being placed in isolation after landing on flights from China, I began to feel unwell. It became apparent that my symptoms pointed to this new virus so I had to phone in sick to work and cancel plans with friends. I was oblivious at that point to the fact that it would be months before I returned to work, several weeks before I felt well again and that cancelling plans would become a way of life for quite some time.
One Of The Lucky Ones
I know that I’m writing from a place of real privilege. I was one of the lucky ones who spent the lockdown safely at home with my husband and our two kids. We also have a garden so we had the option of spending time outside. We were so grateful that, for once, the Scottish weather allowed this to be a pleasant experience and we made the most of our outdoor space.
We were also fortunate that neither of our children were at a transition or exam stage in their education.
The Hardest Challenges
For me, hands down the hardest thing about being in lockdown was the separation from family and friends. We are lucky that my mum lives nearby so as we moved through the stages of easing lockdown, we were able to have garden meetups and eventually make a bubble.
Meanwhile, my brother and his family were at the other end of the country and I’ll forever be sad about missing out on several precious toddler months with my nephew and not being able to meet my niece until she was already seven months old.
The other challenge I faced at the very beginning of lockdown was being ill with Covid. In some ways, although I felt pretty awful, it probably helped me to get through the first few weeks of our new restrictions. I’ve never been suited to being stuck at home but being ill anyway made it easier to accept.
Homeschooling
While the closure of schools was welcomed in our home, we hadn’t been prepared for the “home learning” experience that was to come. We had mixed success with home learning. I think it’s fair to say none of us particularly enjoyed it although at that time, it was still preferable to actually having to go to school.
After a while, and some not so fun days of playing school at the dining room table, I realised and accepted that this was a very different, unique time and that there was no need to or point in trying to turn our home into a classroom. I’m so glad that I realised this given the several months that schools remained closed. I’m not sure I should admit this but we became quite adept at prioritising the work that was actually important for my son and daughter’s learning and gave up bothering with the tasks which poor teachers had clearly had to include as time fillers!
Working From Home
As a teacher I was classed as a key worker but the role I held in 2020 meant that I wasn’t actually required to go into school very often so most of my work took place at home. The challenge of trying to do my own work while also supporting my kids with their school work was real - as I know many parents will testify!
My headteacher at the time was very careful to limit “ping anxiety” but even with the best of intentions, my phone was constantly pinging with work messages and emails. So even if I had planned working hours to suit my family, I would regularly find myself drawn in work conversations in various WhatsApp groups or tasks and it was so hard to switch off.
I know that some people badly missed going to work while others embraced the shift to working from home. I was in the latter camp. I feel a bit bad to say that I did not miss going to work at all. Not once. I think this was the start of me realising that there was a different way to live - a way I preferred.
A Different Way
How luxurious it felt to be out walking with my dog at the time when I would normally have been driving my long commute to work. To finish for the day and not have the drive home to face before I could enjoy time with my family. Working around online sessions for myself and the kids, we were often able to start and finish the day at times that suited us better than the standard school times. There were no packed lunches to bother with either! Instead we enjoyed proper lunches at the table or in the garden together.
Unexpected Joys and Positive Changes
The reprieve from having to go to work was not the only unexpected positive of the lockdown. First and foremost, although my husband still worked his shifts as a firefighter, we had so much family time together. I know how lucky we were to have each other through this experience and I’m grateful to not have been on my own, I’m not sure how I’d have fared.
For my son who was really struggling with school (pre Autism diagnosis) the break from having to attend was the best thing that could have happened and we very quickly saw how much more relaxed he was with school out of the equation.
During lockdown I learned to do life at a slower pace. We couldn't go anywhere so there was so much more time to do what needed done around the house, organising rooms one at a time and pottering in the garden.
In lieu of a social life I found myself doing activities I had left behind in childhood; colouring in, drawing and even writing weekly letters to my mum.
One of my most treasured memories of lockdown is the regular video calls with family and friends. These video calls not only made us stop and relax for a while, they also allowed us to see my little nephew growing and developing - something I hadn’t wanted to miss.
As well as just chatting, we began to have weekly Fika time with my mum who was isolating five minutes up the road and my brother and sister-in-law in England. We used video calls to connect and chat while having coffee and baking or sometimes special treats we had had delivered to each other.
As we were confined to our house other than our daily walks, my family found ways to create fun and occasions. The one that stands out was putting a Runrig concert on TV on the night that I had been due to attend another concert. We got dressed up, I had a wee gin and we partied in our living room. There were a few other “home concerts” following that one, as well as the quizzes which seemed to become popular with many families.
Uncertainty
Having found this freedom, which seems a strange thing to say given the circumstances, I found it incredibly stressful to cope with the uncertainty of how long the lockdown would last. I was much happier than I had been at work. I was able to spend so much time with my husband and kids and once I recovered from the virus, able to go for long walks with my dog. Most of all there were no “Sunday scaries”. I had been introduced to the possibility of living otherwise.
I became hooked on the news - constantly checking social media, unreliable though it can be, for updates and listening to the daily briefings from the Scottish First Minister every lunchtime. While I was concerned about the illness and alarmed by the rising death toll, I was also listening with bated breath, living in fear that today would be the day they announced the reopening of schools. The fact that even in the midst of such a horrific pandemic, I was so concerned by the prospect of going back to work was a huge signal to me that maybe I needed to look into the possibility of making changes once life resumed.
Re-entering “Normal” Life
Ultimately, getting back to normal was the aim of this game and much as there were things I was desperate to do again and people I couldn’t wait to see, getting back to normal was a daunting thought. I realise as I’m writing this that I feel a bit sick just remembering how anxious I felt. For all that, as a nation, we were slowly gaining greater freedom, I felt as though the opposite was happening for me.
While my daughter was quite happy to get back to school, I didn't want to have to send my son back to a place that had made him so unhappy and I didn’t want to have to leave the comfort of my family and my home to go back to travelling to a job I no longer enjoyed.
But there was no choice so we all went back to doing the normal things. However, there was nothing normal about any of it. We were all in schools wearing masks, trying to distance ourselves from others and this variation of our lives was routinely interrupted with year group isolations or text messages from the government telling us we had to isolate.
I’ve always been a planner and I struggled knowing that any plans we made were at risk of being disrupted if any of us either experienced symptoms or had unwittingly been in contact with a person who had tested positive for Covid. The journey to resuming normal living was full of false starts and I found this period very unsettling.
The Changes I Held Onto
Gradually, for many of us, life did return to normal. Throughout the pandemic I’d been curious about whether the changes people had made to their lives would last. I had seen so many of us embrace a different approach to life, appreciating that sometimes less is more and valuing the little things. But it was always going to be a challenge to maintain some of these changes when we were dispatched back into normal life. There are some changes that I and my family have held onto:
Goodbye to Teaching
The summer after lockdown, in 2021, I moved to a new teaching post and it confirmed to me that teaching was not for me anymore. (You can read that story here.) So I am no longer teaching. I’m still figuring out - and blogging about - what I’ll do next. My aim is that whatever I end up doing, I’ll feel in control of my own life.
Educating Our Way
The months spent in lockdown enabled us to see the damage that being in the wrong school was causing our boy. Since then, we have listened to our son and our instincts. We moved to a more nurturing school for his remaining time at primary school. And over the last few years we have worked in collaboration with school staff to allow our son to get his education in the right ways for him. It’s evolved over time and continues to evolve. I don’t even allow myself to dwell on how life would have been if we hadn’t taken this chance to educate our way.
Walking
I was a regular walker (thanks to Toby dog) before lockdown but since then it’s become a crucial part of my mental health toolkit. Since the days of lockdown when we were only able to see friends outdoors, I have continued to enjoy walks as a healthy and inexpensive means of socialising with friends.
FaceTime
I really wasn’t a fan of FaceTime before. I liked texting or old fashioned phone calls where neither I nor the person I was speaking to could see if I looked a state! But I was so grateful to be able to see the faces of the people I missed while we were kept apart and I have now adopted FaceTime as a regular communication tool.
Podcasts
It was during the winter lockdown that I first stumbled upon the podcasts that I now can't imagine life without. Over the past five years they have been a regular source of education and entertainment.
Slowing Down
Having the virus at the beginning of lockdown forced me to slow right down. And being so limited in what we were allowed to do continued this more relaxed pace of life. I can’t say that I’ve managed to sustain it. However, lockdown helped me find ways to relax that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise and showed me that I can slow down and I’m striving to make this a change that I hold onto. You can read about my endeavours to live more gently here.
Looking Back
Looking back, lockdown was a time of contradictions - fear, sadness and uncertainty mixed with unexpected joys and important realisations. While I would never wish for such circumstances again, I can’t deny that the Covid-19 lockdown changed my life for the better. It forced me to slow down, re-evaluate my priorities, and start to work towards a life I love.
Some changes were temporary, but others have shaped the life I’m leading today. I left a career that no longer fulfilled me, found a better way to support my son’s education, and embraced a more intentional and fulfilling way of living. Most of all I learned, and accepted that life can throw us curve balls. While we have little control over this, we can control how we respond. And sometimes, the most unexpected disruptions lead us exactly where we need to be.
Just as we all did in 2020, keep looking for the rainbows!
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