Member-only story
Re-evaluating our family priorities and learning to be a family again.
8760 Days. That’s how long I’ve known my husband. 8760 Days.
After that long together, we had a solid routine. We knew how each other woke up, how long we took our showers, and who was going to make the kids’ lunches that day. We knew what to expect from our family routine.
But then the pandemic hit on day 8395, and that routine ceased to exist. We were thrown into survival mode. Our college-aged son moved home, my younger boys started online school, and my husband’s job fortunately shifted to remote. With everyone home, I struggled to find a chunks of time to work on my manuscript and found myself cooking non-stop, cleaning all the time, and crying over the growing death counts.
And yet, this crazy, upside-down, sideways year has been my favorite 365 days with my husband and boys.
Pre-pandemic, we had become so entrenched in our routines that we didn’t know we needed to hit pause until it was forced on us. My husband often left for work at 5:30am and didn’t return home until 7:30pm, and my boys ran from school to sports and jobs to homework and then bed. Family meals were rare, and brief conversations only happened as we passed each other in the kitchen or over text. We were…
