As the world started to change it felt like it was all connected. When I flew back to Los Angeles from London after the funeral the borders were literally closing behind me. I was surrounded by people in masks. The air was full of anxiety, like a huge volcano had erupted and the lava was heading towards us, no one having any idea when it would stop. For the first few days after I got home, I found it a struggle to get through reading a story to my kids. A week later, my cat pissed all over the sofa and I couldn’t smell it. Food didn’t taste of anything. I put the rough throat down to having cried my way through the previous week, but as I waved coffee under my nose and got nothing, the news broke that losing your sense of smell was a symptom. Other friends that I had been with in London started to get ill. For them it was fever, flu, days and days in bed. By all accounts, I was lucky. We all wondered if it was coronavirus itself but didn’t really believe it. Still sort of joking about it, questioning all the ridiculous hype. We had no way to find out. There were no tests at that point. Only the realisation that the global pandemic was striking us all, and the people in charge hadn’t done anything to protect us. Oh God, I thought to myself as the schools closed and the restaurants locked their doors, we’re all totally fucked.

What you are about to read are highlights from the (almost) daily diary I wrote from the start of isolation until the summer of 2020 when we moved house. I went from being a working mother with high demands and deadlines to suddenly being a full-time stay-at-home mum. I tackled this with varying levels of success. I had to step up my mum game, protect my kids from my grief, be emotionally available for my husband and basically pull my shit together way sooner than I think was right. Be prepared for a lot of parenting, drinking, edibles, shitting, pissing (the kids and the cat, not me), crying and analysing. But amid the stresses, there was a lot of good too. When life was stripped right back to the bones, I realised how strong my skeleton was. I have changed a lot since 15 February, and I’m happy to share the process and thoughts that go with it.

2020 is the year that changed us all, and maybe that is OK.

Love Dawn x

PIECE ONE

Full-Time Stay-at-Home Mum

18 March

Isolation Update – Totally holding it together