I got in my car and did one final lap around my neighborhood, and then I just started driving. It was the utter dark loneliness of coming back to an empty apartment that made me decide to move home to my parents. I am the girl that can go to the pharmacy for the people that she loves. In the hospital, with my sister 10 hours a day, it became almost a meditation: I am the girl who can wear a mask for the people she loves. Realizing that strength - that was such a changing moment in my life. If I couldn’t even leave my house to get groceries, how could I drive across the country? You do what you need to do for the people you love. I had been diagnosed with PTSD, and wearing a mask is very triggering for trauma. The exact moment I knew I was going to be OK was when I was driving to New Mexico and realized, “I’m the girl that despite all challenges will drive across the country in a freaking pandemic to be with the people she loves most.” I am thankful we are back to being sisters. When I offered to go, I was expecting her to say no. We had had a falling out and weren’t speaking. Then in the summer my sister in New Mexico was hospitalized with a cyst that could have been cancerous. They would be constant friends to me - my mourning dove, she always sings between 7 a.m. I learned the barn owl and the mourning dove and house sparrows. I downloaded an app to learn all of their songs.

I lived on the top floor of a duplex, I had this gorgeous front porch. I spent most of 2020 dying for human interaction. This is the story of how America is beginning that journey, in her own words. We have a window now to look at our lives anew. Where it takes us remains to be seen.īut the clarity that comes with intense suffering often clouds as time moves on. The process of reflection is just beginning. The questions of how we have changed will be with us in the months, and years, ahead.

For many, the suffering of this past year has birthed an awakening. Transformation was forced on some, and for others it was chosen. Others have found unexpected resilience and courage, rage or stillness.

Through it all, the world has not stopped. Who am I? Who are we? Who are we becoming? How have we been transformed? Questions about how we live, how we suffer, and how we make meaning of our short time here on this earth. People have found themselves close to life’s deepest questions, those forced by an apocalypse. Everyone has a personal “before” and “after.” It has been a collective near-death experience, for those lucky enough to survive. Everyone knows someone who got sick or died or lost her job. The coronavirus pandemic and all it has wrought is such a moment. Certain moments in life have the power to shift our core sense of being.

Who we are now