Coping away from your family during Lockdown
My name is Katie, I am 20 years old and live just outside of Saffron Walden. I’ve been in quarantine for 12 days now, away from my my mum and dad and it’s scary. Scary to think I now might not be able to see them in person for a few more weeks or months.
Our Isolation
I have been in isolation since the 19th March due to my boyfriend’s mum coming down with a sore throat and a cold one morning after I stayed at their house. The doctors advised us to stay at home for 14 days to make sure the whole household had gotten rid of the symptoms before returning back to everyday life.
I choose stayed with my boyfriends family because I did not want to take anything back to my household. I knew I would miss my family for 2 weeks, but my Mum is a career for the elderly and I think they need her a lot more than I do at this time.
4 days into our lockdown the government announced that there will be an extended lockdown to 3 weeks, this will mean I’m going a month without seeing my mum of my dad which is going to be difficult.
Coping
Some days can be a struggle. Some days I’m okay. Don’t get me wrong, my boyfriend’s family are all so lovely and I am so grateful for them having me at their house and looking after me!
I just miss that contact with my mum and dad. The cuddles I miss the most.
Ways I have been coping
We have been using different resources to keep the family in contact and to entertain ourselves. We have created different Facebook and WhatsApp groups of the whole family so we can talk to each other via message easily in a group and check up on each other everyday.
Over the weekend, I created a quiz and we did a video call with my mum’s family so we could all join in and have a ‘family game night’ which was really nice after not being able to do it for a while. This is going to be a weekly occurrence where a different member of the family will write the quiz.
On Tuesdays I have a quiz with my dads family. We use zoom to connect the whole family together and this week my dad has created the quiz but it is changing to different people making the quiz each week.
My dad, brother and I FaceTime weekly to keep in contact and check up on each other.
Opening Up
If you are in the same position as me, make sure you are opening up about how you are scared to the people you are with. Supporting each other is just as important as sharing your feelings. If you let other people support you, make sure you support them to and let them know they can tell you how they are feeling. Remember this is scary for everyone, we are all in the same boat so let’s all help each other!
Final Thoughts
The most important thing of all is that your family are all healthy and when this is all over we can all have the biggest party of all time! There are lots of video calling, phones, gaming facilities that will help us all stay connected so we can keep talking to our families. Make sure you use all the resources you can to stay connected and check up on your family everyday.
At the moment, decisions like the one I made can be difficult. We are all going to have a lot of lows but at the end of it there will be a lot of highs! Keep your kind focused each day and peddle up the hill. Each day we are one day closer to all of this being over.