Category: Life & Love

There are two sets of sirens. One siren, sharp and constant, is punctuated by the other, which is harsh and honking and sounds like goose calls. It’s an ambulance and a fire truck, probably police. It sounds like danger. I’m listening from a hotel window, looking down from the 17th floor onto the dark, cold, desolate streets of downtown Winnipeg, and wondering how the people whose job it is to sound those sirens could have so totally failed 15-year-old Tina Fontaine. By the time her 72-pound body was pulled from the Red River five years ago, wrapped in a duvet and weighed down by rocks, the Anishinaabe girl had been dead for days. There was no need for sirens by that point, because the danger had already passed for Tina—or rather, it had been allowed to pass. The police officers, social workers, nurses and doctors who had interacted with her in her last days hadn’t made a peep.

Tina’s fate is disturbingly normal for Indigenous people in Canada, especially women, girls and Two-Spirit people. We are told that schools, hospitals, social services and police are there to help us, so we ask for their help. Instead of help, we’re often met with indifference at best, outright hostility and racism at worst.

Ultimately, callousness and violence are two sides of the same genocidal coin. Both are why Tina is gone. Both are why I can’t forget her, more than five years later.

Last June, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) released its final report, after nearly three years of research, hearings and community consultations. Titled Reclaiming Power and Place, it was over 1,000 pages long and covered topics including health, culture and justice. The report argued that the “process of colonization has, in fact, created the conditions for the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people” (the latter an acronym encompassing people marginalized because of their sexuality or gender). It ended with 231 recommendations. The most important was to create and implement a national action plan across all levels of government. Others ranged from the need for a universal basic income to calls to assess—and address—the relationship between resource extraction and gendered violence.

Unfortunately, many Canadian news outlets ignored the majority of the report and instead chose to focus on the use of one word: genocide. Debate swirled around whether the historical and ongoing culture of death facing Indigenous women and girls really constituted genocide, as the inquiry commissioners argued. Legacy media, including the National Post, Toronto Star and Toronto Sun, were quick to disagree, rapidly publishing columns and editorials that avoided the report’s actual legal arguments.

Just the month before, the Canadian Journal of Economics had published a study on the mortality rates of Status First Nations people (those legally identified as “Indian” under the Indian Act). It found that Status Indian women and girls between the ages of 10 and 44 have mortality rates that are three to four times higher than those of females in the general population. Status girls aged 15 to 19 are five times more likely to die than non-Status Canadians.

Reclaiming Power and Place was full of similar statistics. It cited 100 other reports, from other inquiries—Manitoba’s 1991 Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to name just three. Inquiry members wrote that they couldn’t calculate the number of Indigenous women and girls who have been killed or gone missing since 1980, but estimated it was more than 1,181, the oft-cited number from a 2014 RCMP report. The three Indigenous women and one Indigenous man who wrote Reclaiming Power and Place built on decades of research and evidence to outline exactly what genocide means in the Indigenous context in Canada.

The mainstream response to this painstaking work was to paint the authors as overreacting.

The backlash against the report played out in my own life. I was writing regularly for the Globe and Mail then, which published an editorial outright dismissing the claim of genocide (it called the idea “absurd”). The editorial came out three days after the report, suggesting that the writer was so eager to refute it that they couldn’t waste time actually reading all of it. The editorial ran without a byline, which I understood as meaning that it was the official position of the paper.

I read the whole report: It took me five more-or-less full workdays, and it was hard. The numbers in such reports aren’t just statistics to me. They’re a reminder of a reality that, as a Haudenosaunee woman whose family is from Six Nations of the Grand River territory, I struggle to forget so that I can function day to day. But when you’re trying to convince people you’re human—that what happened to your people and is still happening to your people is, in fact, genocide—you can’t afford to forget these sorts of statistics.

Read this next: As an Indigenous Woman, I Was Triggered By the MMIWG Report

My attempt at this convincing is through my writing. And as a writer, I’ve always believed that good writing and strong logic could change people’s hearts. I’ve employed Aristotle’s modes of persuasion—logos, ethos and pathos—in all my pieces, trying to stress to non-Indigenous Canadians how traumatic it is to move through the world bombarded by constant evidence that the nation you live in wants you dead. I’ve tried to expose how many modern injustices are just continuations of residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and other policies and practices Canadians today apologize for, insisting they would never let them happen again. I’ve thrown all the evidence I can at readers, hoping and hoping that if I spill enough blood, it would convince Canadians that I was human, too.

I did all of this in the pages of the Globe and Mail. And the editors I worked with directly saw great value in my work. But that unbylined editorial suggested that the editors in charge of the paper saw very little value in me as a person. Despite the serious financial consequences, I decided to stop writing for the Globe that day.

I thought of asking who exactly had written the editorial, asking how they could publish something so careless. But it felt like there was no point. The best statistics, historical information and research I could use to refute the editorial were in the report itself. If the writer had, indeed, read the full thing and still come to the conclusion that Canada’s treatment of Indigenous women absolutely could not constitute genocide, there was no way to compromise. To my mind, my disagreement with the Globe comes down to the fact that while they appeared to have found a way to monetize my thoughts as an Indigenous woman, they couldn’t figure out how to monetize my humanity. So they reverted to a tried-and-true Canadian practice: monetizing Indigenous women’s dehumanization and disregard.

How can you meet in the middle with people who seem incapable of listening? Who believe Canada is inherently good, have built their lives around that belief and refuse to see how a “good” country might also be carrying out something as awful and unforgivable as genocide? You can’t. So I didn’t. I left.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights opened in Winnipeg in 2014. Initially, the museum stated that it would not use the term genocide when referring to state crimes against Indigenous people in this country—except when discussing our peoples’ attempts to “gain recognition of these violations as genocide.” Instead, former president and CEO Stuart Murray said in 2013, it would present historical facts to visitors to “help them reach their own conclusions.” That decision was reversed last year, thankfully. On my visit to Winnipeg a few months ago, I thought maybe I’d stop by. Then a friend told me the museum was built right on The Forks, where the Assiniboine River meets the Red River, the river where Tina’s body was found. I knew immediately I didn’t want to go. I thought about how long Tina had been down there, whether the river held her little body reverently, like a dropped pearl, or whether that idea was me projecting my emotions onto the environment.

I’ve felt shifts in what I can only describe as energy in certain spaces. The last time was touring the grounds of the former Mohawk Institute, Canada’s oldest residential school, in Brantford, Ont., where I live. As soon as I stepped inside the boiler room in the basement, my chest became heavy, as though someone were standing on it. Breathing suddenly felt like a herculean task. The Mohawk Institute survivor who was giving the tour told us that many, many children were abused there. The teachers used the sound of the boilers to cover their screams. I felt light-headed and left the room.

I know it’s irrational—more precisely, I know others want me to think it’s irrational—but I feel the Red River, like that boiler room, holds spiritual and emotional traces of the violence that took Tina and so many others. If I looked at that river, if I smelled it, I was sure I’d get sick. Best to not look. Best to pretend everything was fine, like the rest of Canada has done for centuries.

But I don’t have that luxury. The reality of that basement, that school, that state-sponsored violence, has filtered through generations in my community. Everything is not fine, and I see that in the faces of my friends and family. I feel it working its way through my brain, convincing me that I’m worthless, or better off dead, or both.

Read this next: What Indigenous Activists Want You to Know About the MMIWG Inquiry

I hear it in the words of the white people around me. One day, at that hotel in Winnipeg, I was waiting for an elevator alongside three white men. An Indigenous man came up to ask them if he could bum a smoke. They looked at one another with expressions of shared understanding, and then said no. The man left, the elevator arrived and my body tensed as I waited for what I knew was coming.

“I definitely wasn’t going to give that guy a cigarette.”

“Oh, no way.”

“You know what would be funny? If someone soaked a cigarette in gasoline, gave it to one of those guys and watched what happened.”

I quickly processed what this sentence meant. First, this white man was pretending that he didn’t know what would happen if someone lit a cigarette soaked in gasoline. Second, this white man thought that possibly killing “one of those guys”—presumably an Indigenous man—would be “funny.” Third, this white man thought that possibly killing an Indigenous man would be funny if “someone” did it, but very strategically did not say who. Fourth, and perhaps most telling, this white man thought that, because I have white skin, he could say this in front of me with no ramifications, expecting that any white woman would appreciate a joke about killing Indians.

I turned, disgust plain on my face as I surveyed all three white men, and said the only words I could think of at the time: “That’s so messed up.” Then I walked away.

Back in my room, my body shook for over an hour, scared for my brown and Black Indigenous kin, who cannot hide who they are and always pay for their visibility. Even in one of the most Indigenous cities in Canada, it isn’t safe. In Canada, for Indigenous people, it’s almost never safe.

“There really isn’t much to talk about because they haven’t done much,” the inquiry’s chief commissioner, Marion Buller, told APTN.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian news was dominated by stories about the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, and their objection to a natural gas pipeline proposed by Coastal GasLink. The company wants to build the pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory out west, and has strategically used provincial courts to be able to do so. In February, an injunction against interfering with pipeline construction led to arrests of Wet’suwet’en people on their own territory, sparking months of solidarity actions, including rail-line blockades. As RCMP officers moved in, they walked past displays of red dresses meant to represent the land defenders’ missing and murdered family and friends—a moment of heartbreaking, almost perverse symbolism.

Nine pages of Reclaiming Power and Place explore the relationship between the camps of largely male workers brought in for projects such as the Coastal GasLink pipeline and violence against Indigenous women. Using both first-person testimony and academic research data, it documents the high rates of sexual assault, harassment, sexually transmitted infections and addiction in and around what some call “man camps.” Later, the recommendations aimed at resource development executives suggest that planning for such projects incorporate the potential impact on Indigenous women and girls.

The same consideration is asked of the governments that approve such projects. When and if the national action plan does come, I’ll be noting whether or not Bennett, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller and their colleagues honestly address this issue.

Before Tina Fontaine was born, her mother was also a child in care. Three years before Tina was killed, her father also died tragically, but social services never provided the counselling her aunt requested. I sometimes think about what Tina’s life would have been like if her family wasn’t a textbook example of the trauma Canada visits on Indigenous families. I imagine a world where Tina’s great-aunt Thelma Favel never had to testify against Raymond Cormier, the man accused of killing her, then see him declared innocent of all charges; a world where Tina realized her dream of becoming a social worker, and fundamentally changed the system that had so fundamentally affected her.

But that’s not how it went. Among the endless reports documenting genocide is one from March 2019, about Tina’s life and death. In it, Daphne Penrose, Manitoba’s advocate for children and youth, revealed that Tina had asked for help from social services organizations multiple times in the weeks before she died, and at least once was told that there were no beds available. Homeless at 15, she went where she was told to go, asked who she was told to ask and was still left to fend for herself. Then she was killed.

It has been a year since the release of Reclaiming Power and Place. This was not the piece I wanted to write to commemorate it. I wanted to be positive, to emphasize how powerful Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people are and highlight their leadership despite nearly impossible odds.

But I don’t want to pretend to be positive about their future when I’m not. I don’t want to pretend to know how to convince people to care when I don’t. I don’t want to pretend that words are enough when we need actions, now.

I don’t want you, dear reader, to read this, think it’s sad, then move on with your life as though it’s out of your hands. It isn’t. After all, Tina’s death is largely what sparked non-Indigenous support for a MMIWG inquiry in the first place, and that support is largely why the inquiry happened.

Read this next: “We Need Tina Fontaine to Know She’s Important:” Five Experts on What Needs to Change

Every Valentine’s Day since 1992, Indigenous women in Vancouver have organized a march to memorialize the lives of their murdered and missing daughters, sisters, relatives and friends. For years, police ignored their insistence that a serial killer was preying on women on the Downtown Eastside. That killer, Robert Pickton, wasn’t arrested until 2002. He was convicted of six murders but has said he killed 49 women.

In 2005, NWAC initiated the Sisters in Spirit research project. Part of an ongoing effort to put a number to the problem, the goal was to create a database of missing women and girls. Funding was cut by the Harper government in 2010.

No one ever listens to Indigenous women when we advocate for ourselves. Then, at a 2014 press conference about Tina’s death, homicide Sergeant John O’Donovan displayed obvious anger and grief. “She’s a child,” he said. “This is a child that’s been murdered. . . . Society should be horrified.” Spoken by a white man, those words seemed to finally break the spell. Non-Indigenous journalists began picking up the story; non-Indigenous Canadians started demanding action. Non-Indigenous Canadians’ support turned the MMIWG inquiry from another ignored request into a Liberal election promise, and then a reality.

Right now it seems like the Canadian government will add Reclaiming Power and Place to the dozens of other inquiries and thousands of other recommendations that it has funded and then ignored. Imagine, though, if the energy that led to the inquiry was summoned to pressure politicians into actually implementing its recommendations. Imagine if non-Indigenous Canadians demanded action plans, timelines and regular updates—as well as answers about delays and failures.

It’s a nice fantasy. But it could be real. It’s what Tina deserves. We don’t have to let her memory face the same indignity her person faced when she was alive.

In January, Jennifer Carroll Foy helped end nearly 50 years of inaction on the Equal Rights Amendment by leading a push to make Virginia the final state needed to ratify the landmark women’s rights legislation to the Constitution. Today, the 38 year old freshman state delegate and criminal defense attorney took on an entirely new, historic challenge, announcing she is running to become the next governor of Virginia.

Carroll Foy is the first black woman to run for statewide office in Virginia, and if elected, she would be the first black woman governor in the country. (She may not be alone in this historic moment—Democratic State Senator Jennifer McClellan, who is also a black woman, has also signaled plans to run for governor in 2021). But just three years ago, when she mounted her first campaign against a well-funded, deeply entrenched white Republican opponent for a seat vacated by another white Republican man, none of this seemed possible.

“When I decided to run, a handful of political people down in Richmond told me ‘no,’ they had their candidate. They figured flipping a Republican seat is really hard and I needed to wait my turn,” she told ELLE.com. Carroll Foy, who ran her campaign while pregnant with twins, went on to beat Michael Makee in a landslide.

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Democrats now run Virginia’s state government for the first time in more than 20 years, an apparent rebuke of Donald Trump, who, according to former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, has been “the single biggest driver to the Democratic Party of Virginia.” Carroll Foy was among the record 28 women elected to the House of Delegates in 2017 and is emboldened by the “wave of new Democratic leadership happening across the Commonwealth and across the country,” noting that in her state, “women are successfully leading the charge.” Indeed, the Washington Post dubbed 2020 Virginia’s “Year of the Woman,” in which Eileen Robin Filler-Corn, the state’s first female Speaker of the House, and Charniele Herring, the first female majority leader, have helped “drive passage of the most ambitious, far-reaching package of liberal legislation of any session in memory.”

“Now, after watching me win my race, serve in the House of Delegates, pass laws and help win the Democratic majority back, those folks don’t talk like that anymore,” Carroll Foy said of those who dismissed her. “Now they see women like me as pushing the conversations we need to have….and I know that many of those people are now happy that I ran.”

She had originally planned to launch her campaign in March, but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of door-knocking and holding in-person town halls, her campaign has shifted to digital outreach, and she manages a campaign while working two jobs and homeschooling her children with her husband.

Carroll Foy is responsible for shepherding several groundbreaking bills, including one that aims to reduce the disproportionate maternal mortality rate among black women, legislation that tackles pregnancy discrimination, a dress code equity act to protect girls and women of color from discrimination based on their hairstyle or headdress, and a push for insurance companies to cover donated breast milk. She emphasized why the ERA matters for women of color: “It’s my job to champion this important policy, this resolution to say it affects women and men in general, but it affects women of color specifically,” she told Jezebel in January. “And that’s because we suffer the gravest impact from inequality in pay.”

The coronavirus has also laid bare the gaping holes in America’s social safety net and exacerbated racial disparities—a disproportionate number of people dying from the virus are black. In Virginia, black and Hispanic people make up at least 46 percent of the state’s cases, and 40 percent of the state’s essential workers are people of color. Yet even as Virginia saw its first cases of coronavirus in early March, the state failed to pass protections like paid sick leave, and earlier this month, Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam authorized the first phase of reopening businesses.

Carroll Foy, who introduced a separate, more expansive paid sick leave bill last year, wrote a letter to Northam highlighting the urgent need for such legislation and is among the signatories on a letter from Virginia’s Black Legislative Caucus warning him that reopening will further endanger black and brown communities. “Under the current plan, and with the already existent racial disparities that this pandemic and economic crisis are perpetuating,” the letter reads, “we will be creating a situation where Black and Brown Virginians outside of Northern Virginia will become guinea pigs for our economy.” She supports rising movements calling to cancel rent and student loan debt during the pandemic, and supports a House Democratic bill that would give millions of Americans a universal basic income over the next several months.

“We see how much people need, and could use, 14 days of paid leave to care for themselves if they are suffering from symptoms of COVID-19, or to care for a child or a loved one,” she told ELLE.com

Her political priorities are in part a reflection of her experiences growing up in Petersburg, VA, a former manufacturing town where nearly one-third of residents live at or below the poverty line, and a majority are black. “Me being from Petersburg has informed a lot of the policies that I carry and that I care about,” she said. “There are a lot of communities in the Commonwealth just like Petersburg. Communities that have been neglected, ignored, and left behind.”

She was raised by her grandmother, a “strong, powerful, and very regal” woman who sent Carroll Foy to church three days a week. “I remember at a very young age, after she had a stroke and became a quadripelegic, sitting at the dining room table with my aunt, trying to decide whether we’re going to pay for our mortgage that month or whether we’re going to pay for the medications keeping my grandmother alive.” Despite the family’s struggles, her grandmother taught Carroll Foy to open up her blessings to others: “That if I had it, that I had to give it.”

“That’s why I dedicated my life to public service,” she said.

She also made it a point to break up the boys club. As a high school student, she remembers watching Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg deliver the Supreme Court’s opinion on the Virginia Military Institute, a public military school, which had barred women applicants. “At the time, I didn’t know that I was relegated to a second-class citizen because I was a woman. That there were colleges in the country that I couldn’t go to just because I was female,” she recalled. “The men in my class, they said things like, ‘Women shouldn’t be allowed to go to VMI because we are biologically inferior, mentally and physically….and called women a distraction to men.” At that moment, Carroll Foy decided to apply to the school because “I was just as strong, as powerful, as capable as any man in that classroom.” She received a men’s uniform, but in 2003, she proved her male colleagues wrong and became one of the first black women to graduate. (Northam is also a VMI alum.)

“I was willing to sacrifice my safety, my time, my college experience, because women were not treated equally, and I wanted to do something about it. And I wanted to prove true what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg said—and I’m paraphrasing—that women can do all things if given the opportunity,” she said.

After graduating, Carroll Foy sought a master’s degree in English from Virginia State University, a historically black college where she briefly taught before going to law school in San Diego. She became a litigation associate but felt unfulfilled, and returned to Virginia where she became a magistrate judicial official, where she administered search and arrest warrants. The role exposed her to how a person’s class, zip code, and race made them unequal targets of the law, which prompted her to instead become a public defender, where she represented people more than 100 percent under the poverty line.

While her perspective, experience, and policy record make her a compelling candidate, she especially stands out when considering her likely opponents, which include two men embroiled in controversy. After media outlets reported that Northam (who is ineligible for re-election) appeared in a medical school yearbook photo where one person was in blackface and another wore KKK garb, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who has said he will run for governor next year, admitted that he also wore blackface in college. Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who has alsoannounced plans to run, was accused of sexual assault by two women. (Fairfax has strongly denied the accusations and filed a defamation lawsuit against CBS. A judge tossed the lawsuit in February.)

Carroll Foy did not directly address whether she believes that either of these offenses should disqualify Herring or Fairfax from being effective leaders, but suggested that the controversies highlight existing issues and the work that’s left to do. “For far too long, survivors of sexual assault and harassment haven’t been believed, and they need to be taken very seriously because these are serious allegations,” she said. “Part of what I hope to do as governor is to help create a culture where women are treated as equals and promote a culture where women are trusted and women are believed.”

Of Herring and Northam’s admissions, she said: “That issue has caused good and uncomfortable conversations about race and reconciliation here in Virginia. I try to look at everything as an opportunity to grow and an opportunity to make amends.” Citing legislation that tackles Jim Crow-era barriers, such as the bill moving through the legislature that will allow localities to decide what to do with Confederate monuments, she said, “We’ve taken a proactive approach with a lot of these controversies…it has made more people more aware of systemic racism and implicit bias and I think everyone has just really doubled down on trying to address a lot of these issues.”

But if Trump is re-elected, Carroll Foy will have to decide how far she’s willing to go to push back against institutional bias. The Trump administration has punished blue states, threatening to pull healthcare funding, limiting tax cuts, and striking back at states like New York for maintaining sanctuary cities that protect undocumented immigrants—even during the pandemic.

“I don’t have to make the pitch about how important governorships are, now,” she said. “Because with the failure of federal government, people see how governors are the backstop from potentially millions of people dying and there being total and complete chaos.”

Even as Joe Biden has appeared to tack left in response to the coronavirus, considering that Virginians decisively voted for the centrist over progressive firebrand Bernie Sanders in its Super Tuesday primary, the next governor is likely to walk a careful line with the party’s progressive wing. Carroll Foy, who endorsed Biden, is not advocating for a healthcare overhaul in the form of universal healthcare, but instead seeks to make the existing system more affordable by lowering premiums, increasing coverage, and lowering copays. She is “not just a Democrat’s delegate,” she said. “I try to meet people where they are, and try to listen.”

“I decided that now was the time when I saw that there were so many politicians that were completely out of touch with Virginians. There is still a stronghold by special interest groups in Richmond, and it’s stifling our ability to reach our full potential,” she said of her historic campaign. “This is the right time to run, because I’m the right leader for this moment.”

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When social distancing guidelines were first introduced in the Pacific Northwest, Phoebe’s family thought she would be fine. “I’m super introverted,” she said, “I am perfectly happy at home with my cat and a book.” But the 25 year old, who, like others interviewed, requested her last name not be used in order to protect her privacy, has also struggled with agoraphobia.

An anxiety disorder characterized by extreme fear and avoidance of places or situations that might cause adverse reactions like panic attacks, agoraphobia often makes it difficult to leave home. While the pandemic has forced entire societies indoors and made going outside fear-inducing across the board, it can exacerbate agoraphobia at a time when one of the most effective techniques for treatment is severely restricted.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on exposure, first to the sensory components of anxiety (like dizziness or shortness of breath) and then to environments that trigger those reactions (like coffee shops or crowded malls). “Unlike the part of the brain that locks into danger, the part that locks into safety is fragile,” said Dr. C Alec Pollard, who directs the Center for OCD & Anxiety-Related Disorders in Saint Louis and co-authored The Agoraphobia Workbook.

Avoiding exposure, as in the case of those forced to stay home due to COVID-19, is “the number one threat to people’s recovery,” Pollard said, because “as safety learning weakens, the danger learning overtakes it…[and] you have the potential for backsliding.” Though she’s progressed beyond exposure therapy, if the shelter-at-home order Phoebe is under lasts beyond several weeks, she’s worried it’ll threaten her hard-won progress.

Panic disorder and agoraphobia often co-occur, and after developing both as a teenager, there were times when Phoebe wasn’t even able to step foot into the backyard of her childhood home. “Twice as many women have agoraphobia and it’s much more likely to be severe for them,” said Dr. Karen Cassiday, a psychologist who owns and serves as the managing director of the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago. There is evidence of a genetic predisposition to anxiety; when it comes to agoraphobia, “the bigger the genetic contribution, the less you need from your environment to trip it off,” Dr. Cassiday said. Other factors like trauma, environmental stress, and temperament seem to play a role too.

Phoebe’s progress wasn’t always linear, but with the help of a therapist willing to start treatment at home and an extended stay at an in-patient facility, she now considers herself “in remission.” She’s been doing well, living independently and holding down a job, at least until mass layoffs in the hotel industry put her out of work on March 21.

“Something that is very important to keep myself healthy and sane and from falling into a relapse is to have a schedule that keeps me going out of the house,” Phoebe said. “It’s like a muscle. I worked really hard to build that muscle back up again and I don’t want to let it atrophy.”

Julianna De Pascale used to spend hours each day on Google Maps, using the Street View feature to travel farther and farther from her home in Montreal. She developed agoraphobia at 12, and before working with a therapist, this sort of DIY exposure therapy helped her practice when the thought of leaving home and riding in a car filled her with panic.

Now 16, she’s afraid the pandemic will trigger a relapse. Except for trips to get necessary essentials, she has spent the past few weeks at home, where she’s noticed an increase in negative thought patterns. “I was thinking of everything I wanted to do once this is over,” she said. “I was thinking about restaurants and places to go and then I had these little thoughts pop in, like, Aren’t you scared? What if you get a panic attack if you tried to go?”

These days, Phoebe is leaving only once a week for groceries and has to keep reminding herself not to feel guilty for staying in, a sentiment Catherine Noel, 30, said is widespread. “A lot of us with agoraphobia are saying, ‘thank goodness,’ like, finally I can be comfortable. Finally I can be in my house and not have a bad feeling about it.”

The assumption that everyone with agoraphobia is happy at home is a “big misunderstanding” about the disorder, Noel told me. While home can feel like a safe space, it’s also a site of pain—shame, isolation, boredom, and profound anxiety about the next panic attack or grocery run. De Pascale described how depressing it was to watch her friends’ lives carry on via social media when she was homebound. “I would literally have dreams of just going out to the pharmacy,” she said.

Not everyone with agoraphobia is homebound, but those who are operate in what Dr. Cassiday called “a very small circumference of safety.” That may allow someone to travel on a certain road, go to one specific supermarket, or visit shops within a given number of miles, but even that can be incredibly fraught. In the most severe cases, leaving home at all isn’t possible.

Noel isn’t homebound, but getting out of the house is a struggle. After a multi-year period she described as “one of the lowest points of my life,” she began doing CBT last year. A few months ago, she got into a good routine: taking her kids to school, grocery shopping, and even swinging by Starbucks. Then she got a part-time job decorating cookies at a nearby bakery, a huge accomplishment.

But before her first day, schools closed in Bergen County, N.J., forcing her to stay home with her two kids instead of reporting to work. “I heard quarantine and I thought to myself, ‘I should be good at this,’” she said. “Not leaving the house, that’s my thing.”

It’s a relief to wake up and realize she doesn’t have to leave. But she misses her routine, more than she expected to. She’s been told that her job will be waiting for her, but Noel worries that after spending so much time at home, she might not be able to take it on when the pandemic ends. Still, she’s incredibly proud of the progress that made getting a job feasible in the first place.

Phoebe isn’t just worried for those coping with the disorder. “You can’t keep an entire society inside for weeks on end and expect things to be fine,” she said. While her past confinement was agoraphobia-induced, it’s given her insight into what others may be suddenly experiencing because of COVID-19 restrictions. “I’ve been there,” she said. “I know what that can do to a person.”

Dr. Cassiday said she’s already noticed what were previously “little twinges” of agoraphobia “firing up” in patients whose symptoms don’t rise to the level of a diagnosis. She predicted a surge in cases; among the mental health professionals I spoke to, there wasn’t a consensus on whether quarantine would lead to a spike in the disorder. But they did agree on the efficacy of treatment and expressed confidence in their ability to help agoraphobic patients through this especially difficult time.

The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns extends to people with agoraphobia who are homebound, even if it seems their lives wouldn’t change much. Charisma, 36, gets groceries delivered, Skypes into therapy sessions, and attends graduate school online. She’s been intermittently homebound, most recently since October. She tried to go outside on March 21, a few hours before Illinois’ stay-at-home order went into effect, but found the sidewalks crowded. Crowds have long been a trigger for her, but COVID-19 amplified her fears. She made it about half a block, had a panic attack, and “scurried home.” Home has also become more challenging. Suddenly hearing all her neighbors in their apartments has increased her stress level; she’s started having panic attacks even at home.

For Krista Hilfiger, 45 and homebound for the past nine years, it’s been frustrating to see the services she struggled to access spring up so quickly in the wake of the coronavirus. Over the years, she’d only found one doctor willing to use telemedicine; because of the coronavirus, it’s suddenly everywhere. “Watching the news when this pandemic rolled in, I became more angry, resentful and bitter,” she said. (Dr. Pollard, who used telemedicine with patients before COVID-19, is hopeful that its widespread availability will continue after the pandemic ends.)

Hilfiger went from holding a job reliant on networking to being confined to a small area around her home. She’s finding it difficult to watch the outpouring of sympathy and support for people newly stuck inside when she’s felt little of that over the years. While it has radically altered her life, she’s adamant that the disorder does not define her. “This is not me at all,” she said. “It’s like some separate entity named agoraphobia is out to get me and doesn’t want me to succeed.”

Under normal circumstances, going to the grocery store is terrifying and exhausting but doable. Now, because she’s immunocompromised, Hilfiger hasn’t gone in weeks. She considers New York’s stay-at-home order a much-needed break from the outside world. When I asked whether she was afraid of losing the progress she’s made, her answer surprised me. “I was hoping that I would just blend in with everybody,” she said, laughing. “[We’d] come out of our houses and [I’d] just kind of sneak in and blend in with them again.” After we got off the phone, she texted a photo of her business card from nearly a decade ago, adding “that was me.”

Most people stuck inside right now are eager to leave home. But for many who’ve struggled to get through the front door or found visiting a coffee shop excruciatingly stressful, it’s not just a matter of when going outside regularly is allowed again, but if it’ll be possible.

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This story was produced in partnership with The Fuller Project.

Terri first realized she was pregnant in late March. She was isolating at home with her boyfriend in rural upstate New York, where she runs a housecleaning business. At 46, she was sure she didn’t want to become a 60-year-old parent to a teenager. “I was like, ‘No, that’s not going to happen,’” says Terri, who asked to be identified by her first name only. She called the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic, a 40-minute drive away, and took the first appointment available, which was a week-and-a-half later. Uninsured, Terri says she planned to show up at the clinic and “throw [herself] at their mercy.”

But before her appointment, she read about telemedicine abortion. All that was required was a phone consultation with a doctor to establish whether she was less than 10 weeks pregnant (the limit for medication abortion’s approved use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration). Once proven, the clinic would deliver abortion pills by mail, allowing for a quiet, non-surgical procedure at home. For Terri, this was a far better option than potentially exposing herself to COVID-19 at a clinic.

Terri is among the many women across the United States who are facing new barriers to abortion care as some conservative states use the pandemic to justify halting procedures, classifying abortions as “non-essential.” In this new environment, telemedicine abortion has gained new momentum, with health care advocates expanding its geographical reach and streamlining protocols, so as to minimize in-person clinic visits.

Telemedicine abortion was pioneered in the United States to address provider shortages by bringing doctors into clinics via videoconference to regions where abortion access is limited. Now, the practice has become a way of bringing providers directly into patients’ homes, bypassing clinics altogether.

So, how does it work? Previously, a telemedicine abortion typically required patients to obtain an ultrasound or pelvic exam at the nearest medical facility to confirm a pregnancy. But in response to the coronavirus crisis, more clinics are offering “no-test” procedures wherein a patient answers a series of questions by phone with a doctor in order to date their pregnancy. Once a gestational age has been established, patients then make just one clinic visit to pick up the pills, due to a federal regulation that mandates pills be dispensed in a doctor’s office or clinic.

Even that is starting to change. In 2016, Gynuity Health Projects, a New York-based research and technical assistance organization, launched the TelAbortion study to evaluate sending abortion pills by mail. (As a research study filed with the Food and Drug Administration, it’s exempt from the in-clinic dispensation requirement.) To date, Gynuity’s clinic partners have mailed nearly 850 packets of pills in the 13 states where the study is active.The number of women who had abortions through the study doubled in March and April, compared to the first two months of this year.

As state governments place additional restrictions on abortion access, Gynuity says it’s gearing up for a spike in demand for services. “I think as things get more and more restricted, we will see our numbers increase,” says Erica Chong, a director at Gynuity and co-director of the study. To reach patients in states where telemedicine abortion is illegal, some of Gynuity’s clinic partners have run digital ads in areas bordering the study states and finding creative ways to get pills to patients. For example, after having a consultation in a participating state, some of Gynuity’s clinic partners “have sent packages with the medication to FedEx offices right near the borders,” Chong says. “They will hold the packages for [patients to] pickup.”

Carafem, a network of reproductive health clinics that offers telemedicine abortions in Georgia, Illinois, and Maryland, also is seeing increased interest in its services as restrictions take effect. Its clinic in Illinois, which is surrounded by states with some of the strictest abortion regulations in the country, experienced a 50 percent rise in demand for telemedicine procedures in the first two weeks of April. Melissa Grant, Carafem’s chief operations officer of Carafem, says she had to assign additional staff to field calls and online requests from residents of Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Missouri.

In New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus, there has been a sharp uptick in demand for procedures by mail. “Our calls from New York are picking up significantly,” says Leah Coplon, program director at Maine Family Planning, which employs doctors licensed in New York and operates as a clinic partner in the TelAbortion study. “We’re getting calls daily, which was not the case before.”

From her home in the Catskills, Terri was one of those callers. She dialed Maine Family Planning on a Tuesday. A staff member determined her eligibility for the TelAbortion study, after which she had an intake consultation, which included detailed instructions on how to take the pills and what to expect. She then “met” with the doctor, via her iPhone, who provided the prescription. The pills arrived the following Tuesday. When we spoke the next day, Terri’s heaviest abortion-related cramping had passed, and she was due for a virtual follow-up appointment with a nurse within a week. “Now with things being closed, I can’t imagine going in [to a clinic],” she says.

Overall, studies in the United States and overseas have found telemedicine abortions result in high patient satisfaction, few complications, and comparable results to standard abortion care. Despite its track record of safety, eighteen states currently ban telemedicine abortion. As the practice increases in popularity, abortion advocates say they worry additional states may ban telemedicine abortion specifically. It could also be vulnerable to the same laws that have already caused widespread clinic closures across the country.

Case in point: In February, Republican senators in Congress introduced the Teleabortion Prevention Act of 2020. “It’s as easy to stop legal telemedicine abortion as it is to create obstacles for a clinic,” says Frances Kissling, a bioethicist and the former president of Catholics for Choice, a pro-choice advocacy group. “We should use it as long as we can, but…if the climate on the abortion remains the same, it has a shelf life.”

Others, however, are optimistic the COVID-19 pandemic will yield lasting changes to how abortion is provided in the United States. “If we learn through research that there are simplified ways to provide services that are still equally effective and acceptable to the patient, then that’s how the medical process changes,” says Grant of Carafem.

In other words, what feels like a new normal now could eventually just become normal. For Terri says protecting herself from the menace of the coronavirus is just one of the advantages of telemedicine abortion. She didn’t face antiabortion protesters who often stand outside of clinics, and in the comfort of her own home, she could perform personal rituals as she underwent the procedure.

She apologized to her body and acknowledged what she called “the mistake to even begin to draw forth a life.” Her boyfriend sat beside her. “It sounds stupid but you have your cats, your bed, your tablet, so you can support yourself,” Terri says. “Emotionally, too, you can say whatever you need to say.”

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The best relationships are easy. That’s been my advice to close friends who have come to me in the midst of fights with their significant others. It always infuriates them. Yes, relationships take time and energy and selflessness, etc. but at the end of the day, I always insist, there should be ease.

Now, on the eight-week anniversary of quarantining away from my husband Michael—a content, laid-back man I’ve been with for more than 10 years— I am ready to admit that I was wrong. The best relationships are not easy. They were, maybe, before *gestures* all this. But we’ve been forced to self-isolate separately for actual fear of life and death and it has been really fucking hard.

I have Crohn’s Disease—a very forever thing that Michael accepted when our relationship first started making me realize we were maybe, probably a forever thing as well. At 18, I knew there was something special about a guy who’d rush to turn on all the showers in his frat house’s bathroom 3 a.m. to drown out the awful noises my body was making from the toilet—not because he cared, but because he knew how upset I’d be if anyone heard me. But it wasn’t until I was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension at the age of 24 that we really understood how building our life together would always be weighted with “what ifs” and decisions that would not be easy.

On the morning of Michael’s auf ruf (a Jewish tradition where a groom is called to the Torah to recite blessings), the rabbi asked the two of us to use one word to describe the other in front of the whole Long Island congregation. I don’t remember the word he picked for me—“brave,” I think?—but I choked up offering “unwavering.” By that point, we’d been together for seven years and survived eight bowel resections (me), two fistula repairs (me), a year without sex due to adult diapers (both of us, but because of me), a lung biopsy that put me on full-time oxygen for months (yes, hello, still me!), and the emotional trauma that came with it all. Still, we were so happy. We are so happy! And even on rough days, things were easy—until now.

The Great Not-Easy began on March 8 when one of my doctors stated what is now obvious: An immunosuppressed, lung-diseased woman (shocker, me!) could die if she contracted the novel coronavirus. My husband is a second-year pediatrics fellow at Mt. Sinai in New York City and he spent the day reasoning that if he wasn’t actually treating COVID-19 patients yet, it would be…fine, probably? for us to continue living together. I would work at home, quarantined from the outside world entirely, and he would work every day in the hospital, but take every precaution to ensure the virus did not enter our 600-square-foot apartment.

Two days later, the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the Mt. Sinai ER and a second of my pulmonologists reiterated just how at-risk I was. The next day, Michael came home reporting hospital support staff crying out of fear of what was to come. The day after, a case was reported from his department and we packed a month’s worth of underwear, medicine, and leggings into my suitcase. I headed home to my mom and dad’s house, about 17 miles away in New Jersey.

The days since then look like this: I wake up before 7 a.m. and I text him “hi.” He’s been at the hospital for hours already, trying each day to conserve PPE and treating more confirmed cases of COVID-19 than the day before. He responds “very busy, sorry” and “talk later.” I Gchat him throughout the day, giving him unimportant updates about what colleagues have pissed me off on Slack and what Cardi B’s IG livestream looked like, “in case [he] missed it lolol”—and feel silly doing it. He “lols,” sends a selfie where I spot a part of his body not as protected as it should be, and we agree to talk later, “before bed.”

At a different time every night (pro tip for all couples quarantined separately: sticking to a “we need to chat at 9:30 p.m. every night or else” schedule is impossible), we have a 10 minute Facetime call that’s punctuated by my parents’ spotty Wi-Fi and Michael’s bleary-eyed exhaustion. I ask when he thinks I can come home to him. He asks me to stop asking. It makes us both cry a little.

We confirm out loud that we are (1) lonely, (2) sad, (3) very tired, and (4) missing each other very much. We just want everyone we love to be safe and healthy and okay. We know that we are much luckier than so many others—the families of the kids who are dying every day on his floors, for example—but dealing with that guilt is hard, and, as such, we’d really, really like to be together for *gestures again, more pathetically this time* this.

It’s in the two-to-three minutes before we hang up that I grasp at the things I know are still unwavering. What matters is that we are both doing everything we possibly can to stay safe and help others, right? (Granted, that second part looks very different to each of us right now.) What matters is not that our plans to start a family have been put on hold, but that they will—if we stay safe and help others—still happen, right? What matters is that when we are able to be together—if we stay safe, please, please, stay safe—we will be together again, right? He wavers, for the first time I’ve ever seen, on the things not pertaining to these us-related questions: on topics like when “normalcy” will return, when things will be safe enough that we can get be in the same room. But the rest? “Yes,” he confirms. “I’m going to sleep, but yes.”

We try and sleep, neither one of us doing a great job at it, and the next day it’s the same. And when one of us (me again! Hi!) gets close to cracking, we send links to the bottles of wine we will drink together upon our TBD reunion. We talk about what our hypothetical babies will look like with the knowledge that, barring the absolute-but-still-possible worst, no matter what happens over the next several weeks, months, or even years, it’ll happen for us, one day.

Easy peasy.

This Mother’s Day will look a lot different from what we’ve come to expect. For most people, there won’t be large gatherings of family or casual hugs exchanged. Right now, it seems, keeping each other safe is the best way to celebrate.

It’s an understatement to say the pandemic has reshaped how we view every aspect of our lives. So in honor of the upcoming holiday, ELLE.com spoke to three women about how the COVID-19 crisis has changed how they’re thinking about motherhood this year, from those who are about to become mothers to those who are seeing their own in a new light.

Learning New Ways to Communicate

“I first found out my dad was sick. It was toward the end of March, and he said he had some mild symptoms, like coughing and aches. I think he had a fever for one day. Then shortly after, my mom told us she wasn’t feeling well. She had gotten a test because she has asthma and a couple of other prior health issues, which eventually came back positive. We were all really worried; I had a feeling my mom would be the one to get sicker.

At first, it was the fever. Then her fever went away, and we all hoped she was done. But it around day 10 when things got worse. She was feeling chest tightness, and her oxygen levels were at the point where you would normally go to the hospital. She didn’t because she was in Queens, New York, where the hospitals were really crowded. A doctor she was working with was able to prescribe her medicines to take at home, and luckily, she was able to stabilize. I don’t know if I would say she’s fully recovered now, but she’s definitely doing a lot better. She’s getting respiratory therapy and is able to exercise again.

The reason I know so much about her experience is because after she recovered, she asked if she could write something for my newsletter about it. That was the first time that I got this very honest, first-hand look. During the time she was actually sick, my dad would send daily updates, but there wasn’t always a ton of detail. My sister and I were constantly like, ‘What’s going on? How’s this?’ My mom was trying to put on a brave face to reassure us because I know she was really scared, too.

I’m in my mid-to-late 20s, and I want my parents to be honest with me. But I also understand they were overwhelmed dealing with her symptoms and trying to update so many family members and also not lose their minds. While she was sick, I was really distracted. I wasn’t telling that many people; I didn’t want it to be the subject of every conversation. I didn’t really want people’s sympathy or pity. I had to stop reading as much of the news because there were so many stories of people who were dying or hospitalized. I was already imagining the worst.

My mom struggled with certain health issues in the past, but never anything of this severity, and it made me see her as more vulnerable. I also see that my mom definitely doesn’t want to make other people do things for her. She was very cared for, but as soon as she could, she wanted to flip the dynamic back. It’s why people love her so much, in a lot of ways, because she’s always trying to go out of her way for people. It made me want to be more conscious about making sure that’s a two-way street. I think it’s also about respect; I want to be able to respect how she wants to be treated.

My sister and I have had a lot of conversations with our parents about communication, about how in these hard times we don’t want to be thought of as younger members who need to be shielded from things. We want to be able to chip in and help and not have anything sugar-coated for us. Having the actual information didn’t make me feel worse, it made me feel more informed and more in control.” —Abigail Koffler, 26

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Becoming an Advocate For My Son

“I found out I was pregnant on Halloween last year, and I’m due on June 25th. I’ve always wanted to be a mom. I had a lot of expectations for pregnancy and motherhood, and it was always something I really looked forward to. Now, a lot of those expectations have been turned on their head.

The unknown of the hospital experience is mostly what freaks me out. When I give birth, I’ll be limited to one support person, and nobody can come visit us. Our families aren’t going to get to come meet the baby in the hospital. We’re unable to hire a doula or a midwife, which is kind of difficult, especially because I’m undecided on pain management and I think it would be so helpful. Our hospital canceled all their in-person birth classes, so we’re trying to do videos online. It’s not quite the same.

What’s really changed for me is I feel like there was a huge focus on community and having your tribe and being with other pregnant mothers or your family before and during recovery. The experience of being pregnant was more centered on the mother. It’s about going to a baby shower, where the mom gets celebrated. But, for me, now everything is about the health of the baby. I would die to just go to Trader Joe’s, something so simple, just get out of the house. But it really forces me to be more selfless. Even if it’s a small chance, is that worth the health of my baby?

It’s also prepared me to be an advocate for him, more than I would have otherwise. There have been times we’ve had to set boundaries. People will say, ‘Oh well it’s stay-at-home, but it’s fine if we’re six feet apart. We should still hang out.’ Or there will be family that wants to see us. It’s been hard. Even going to the doctor, some of our appointments feel a bit rushed, and we really have to push to get answers.

It’s been a transition, but at the same time I’m thankful I have the opportunity to make sure he’s safe. It really is trial by fire.” — Megan Acuna, 24

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Finding Support From Other Moms

“My baby, Rocco Wang, was born on Monday, March 23rd, at 5:56 AM. At first, I wasn’t too worried about giving birth. But as it got closer to my due date, I saw that partners and visitors were being denied access to hospitals. Every day it changed so much. All of a sudden, my husband couldn’t even come into the waiting room with us, and then everyone was wearing masks. I could see this really clear progression of people acting more serious. At that point, I just wanted to have the baby and get in and out of the hospital as soon as possible.

During delivery, my husband was such a good cheerleader. He gave me minute-by-minute updates of what the baby looked like as he left my body: ‘He has so much hair. He has so much hair.’ Ten minutes after I delivered the baby, the hospital staff came into the room and handed us all masks. They said, ‘This is the new policy as of 6 AM.’ The first time I held him, I took the mask off. I didn’t want that to be his first eye-opening experience.

Six hours after I delivered, they stopped allowing visitors all together. The postpartum wing was eerily silent. The midwife from my practice told me that even C-section patients were being released early.

I have another son who’s 21 months, and when I gave birth to my first, it was so different. The maternity ward, the labor and delivery floor, and the postpartum wing were packed. People were there with gifts, with balloons. But this time it was just desolate.

Since no visitors were allowed after noon, my husband helped me get settled before he was kicked out. The head nurse on each floor came around to personally tell you that everyone was going to have to leave. You just had this baby, and you just want to be able to spend time together as a family.

After that, I didn’t have anyone there for 24 hours, no one to go get me a snack or something from outside. We didn’t know that policy was changing, so we didn’t pack enough food. I was sad. I was worried. I started to have this minor complication from my epidural, and I had a really horrible spinal headache.

But that time was also really quiet, and me and my baby got to spend a full 24 hours just cuddled in bed. We got to really know each other. Now, me and him have that little bond.

For anyone who’s worried about giving birth now, the hospitals are doing everything they can to make sure you’re safe. It’s horrible to have to give birth at this time, but we will all have this shared experience. Rely on those mommy groups. For me, it was really nice to read the texts from everyone, to hear all the other women say to me, ‘I’m so sorry,’ or, ‘Congrats.’ There’s so much support with other mothers going through the same thing, with everyone processing it in their own way. In the end, it’ll be a very short couple of days in the grand scheme of you and your baby’s life. “—Katie Sachsenmaier, 33

These interviews have been edited and condensed. Additional reporting by Rose Minutaglio.

They weren’t even going to take the cruise—they were too busy. But at the last minute, Katherine Codekas and her husband Matthew Smith decided since they had already bought the tickets, they’d make the time. So on January 13, they flew to Tokyo and boarded the Diamond Princess, a two-week cruise that embarked from Yokohama, Japan and would take them to several ports in Asia, including Hong Kong and Taipei.

They hadn’t heard much about the Coronavirus before boarding—at the time, the outbreak was ramping up in China, and had spread to other Asian countries, but wasn’t on the radar of most Americans. But when the ship stopped in Hong Kong on the fifth day of the cruise, the driver they hired to take them on a tour was wearing a mask and coughing a lot. Codekas remembers thinking, Should I be worried?

Soon, she had her answer. On the 14th day of the cruise, an announcement came from the captain: someone on board had tested positive for the virus. Soon, the number of positives grew to 10, then higher, and everyone would have to be screened and quarantined. Codekas and Smith were sent into their 500-square-foot cabin and told not to leave. They would spend the next 16 days there, never getting a break from each other.

In many ways, Codekas and Smith were better positioned than some couples to spend an intense amount of time together. They have been married for 22 years, live alone together, and as divorce lawyers who run a private practice together, they have some insight into what keeps couples together or wedges them apart.

But their experience was an even more extreme version of what most couples are facing now as they are stuck at home because Codekas and Smith literally could not leave their room—they couldn’t take any breaks from each other or even leave one another’s line of sight. “You could not cross the threshold of your room and no one could come in your room,” says Codekas. While other passengers got breaks to walk the hallways, Codekas and Smith didn’t because their room had a balcony, which was deemed sufficient to keep them entirely contained in their cabin.

So how did they cope? They had a few strategies. One was to immediately set a routine. “We’d get up, have coffee, take showers, tidy up the room, walk around the 500-square foot room like it was a race track, look out the window, and then it was time for bed so we could get up and do the whole thing over again,” Codekas says.

Meals became the highlights of their days. “They would bring food three times a day, and it was served in a really careful way—you could only take things off the trays, they wouldn’t hand it to you,” she says. “The food was really good, and they would try to bring us special stuff.” They ate a wide range of meals, including goulash, smoked turkey salad, pork adobo, Moroccan stew, smoked salmon mousse, nasi goreng, ceviche, fish and chips, coqu a vin, cottage pie, and Japanese beef curry.

Codekas also set a cleanliness requirement for the cabin, an idea that would work well for couples quarantined in larger spaces, too. “I’m fastidious and I can’t live without complete order, so we definitely had that in that tiny room,” she says. “Matt was very accommodating. He didn’t say, ‘What do you care if I’m sitting around in three-day old underpants? No one else is here.’ No, everyone gets up and showers, we cleaned the cabin, cleaned up after meals, because if you don’t, then things are really going downhill.”

Some of their duties mirrored their home life. “Somebody still has to take trash out,” Codekas says. “That’s Matt’s job at home, so that was his job on the ship, too.” Though he didn’t have to take it far‚ he just left it outside their door.

Still, there was some tension. The biggest fight came from a good idea: They decided to find and explore some separate interests. For Codekas, that meant watching as much mindless TV as possible. Say Yes to the Dress was a favorite. But Smith chose to reactivate an old unused Twitter account to post photos of the food they were served.

At first, it was only a small annoyance for Codekas. “He’d say, ‘We can’t start eating until we take pictures of the meal,’” she says. But then media outlets noticed Smith’s posts and interview requests came rolling in. Codekas would seek refuge in the closet while Smith did interviews to give him space and keep herself out of the shot. She tried to be supportive of his pursuits, but the requests were constant. “She didn’t want to be on camera, so she got frustrated,” says Smith.

Codekas says she found the interviews invasive. “He’s on the phone, Skyping with all these media outlets, and so suddenly we were no longer alone.”

Many interviewers had the same question: Are you bored? “But that was the least of our problems,” Smith says. “Because everyone wanted to contact me, to know what was going on. It was constant. It was just something to do at first, but then every day so many people were interested.”

Codekas found the requests from media outlets in very different time zones the most challenging. “It was a source of friction because it went on 24 hours a day,” she says. “I just wanted to get to sleep, but Matthew would have to Skype at 3am. I would say to him, ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, come on.’” Smith laughs as Codekas recounts the memory.

But aside from the squabbles over the media requests, in some ways, Codekas and Smith say they got along even better than at home. There were no chores or bills to argue about, no one to blame for not changing the cat litter.

The couple also enacted another strategy: find a common enemy. They bonded by making fun of people they could see from their balcony, including some passengers who were screaming, “America, come save me.” Also, as they watched preparations for the American evacuation from their balcony, there was a woman who showed up to coordinate the effort dressed in stilettos with a giant designer purse who earned much derision from the couple. And kept their focus on the end goal. “We just had to stay healthy so we could get off the boat, so that’s what we focused on,” Codekas says.

They did stay healthy; they never showed symptoms of coronavirus and were allowed to disembark. They decided not to be airlifted out by the U.S. government and spend another 14 days in quarantine on a military base, and instead got off in Japan and spent 16 days there before they were able to fly home. Now, Codekas and Smith are back home in Sacramento, living together and running their law practice again.

Their work as divorce attorneys makes them something of anthropologists for troubled couples, and the couple says there were other passengers who didn’t seem to deal with the quarantine very well. “One man told us his wife managed to come up with every grievance and transgression from their entire marriage,” Smith says. They also talked with a newlywed couple who were “freaking out” because they had never spent this much time alone together before, and were pleading for President Trump to come get them off the boat.

Codekas and Smith agree that being stuck in a tiny room together is a good way to tell whether your marriage is built to last. “If this pandemic was the catalyst to get you in our office, it probably means the marriage wasn’t going to work anyway,” Codekas says. “There’s always something that gets people into our office—maybe being quarantined at home was what it took for some people to realize they don’t want to live like this anymore.”

So, did they pick up any new clients among their fellow passengers? “Time will tell,” Smith says.

For Melissa, a 29 year old resident of Tampa, happy hours look much different now: They’re more frequent, start earlier, and she’s often alone. While she rarely drank at home without company before the coronavirus pandemic, now she reasons that “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

And in that sense, Melissa is far from alone.

Americans in quarantine are buying literal tons of alcohol: Data from Nielsen showed online sales of alcohol jumped 378 percent the week of April 11 over the same week last year. (Alcohol delivery company Drizly reported its year-over-year customers grew by a whopping 1,600 percent by the end of March.) For the week of March 11, all sales of alcoholic beverages rose 55 percent over the same period last year, according to Nielsen. And we’re not just purchasing more: we’re stocking up and buying booze in bulk. (Of course, those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Restaurants and bars are closed—although some are delivering alcohol or offering to-go service—so our buying habits have shifted to other venues.)

Elizabeth, a 29-year-old San Francisco resident, estimates she and her fiancé now spend about $100 a week on alcohol. On a recent haul, they brought back five cases of beer, a bottle of Jägermeister, and a bottle of bourbon—the latter of which the pair used to make hot toddies and mint juleps, in part, Elizabeth says, to make up for the date nights out they’re missing because of the pandemic.

And while spending serious money on cocktails with the girls or sharing bottles of wine in a low-lit restaurant might not have raised any eyebrows before isolation, the communal aspect of social drinking is temporarily gone. We have more time and space to scrutinize our behavior, and drinking at home—and, often, drinking alone—triggers our sense of social stigma. After all, we’ve been taught, drinking even to excess is a social activity, while imbibing alone is often considered cause for alarm.

Maria, a 26 year old living in Denver, relished evenings out on the town with friends. “There are so many more happy feelings associated with going out with friends and bar hopping,” she says. “Having a glass of wine and watching a movie at home for the 12th straight night isn’t the same.”

Drinking itself has lost its fun, too. “There’s an automatic feel to it,” Maria admits. “It’s almost built into the routine into this point. It feels like it’s something we’re all doing because it’s a distraction—a very temporary distraction from everything we’re all dealing with every day.”

People are still finding ways to drink socially, but at a healthy distance. Bars are hosting online happy hours, while Zoom meetings with friends and coworkers might not feel complete without a cocktail in hand. (Elizabeth has a standing, Pina colada-heavy Zoom happy hour with friends every Wednesday, and Jennifer, a 34-year-old resident of Cleveland, made a rule that she’d limit her drinking to when she can meet her friends digitally on Google Hangouts.) Neighbors toast to one another from the safety of their respective porches or fire escapes; and virtual wine tastings have cropped up from Napa Valley to Miami. In each of these scenarios, people may technically be drinking alone—but they’re drinking alone together.

But our own sensibilities hint at a darker side to drinking in isolation. Late night host Conan O’Brien recently tweeted, “Can we all agree to temporarily raise the bar for what’s considered an ‘alcoholic?’” a joke that grasps at an uncomfortable truth: Some of us are drinking not only alone but more heavily, in ways that may be unhealthy.

Elizabeth admits she nips at a glass of whiskey before, and sometimes after, going to the grocery store. It takes the edge off the stressful excursion, she says, but isn’t something she’d consider doing outside the confines of coronavirus. Maria took a glass of wine—concealed in a to-go Yeti cup—on a walk with her dog. It was early evening, and she’d already been drinking. Taking the wine with her “was a fun adventure,” she says, “because there’s no other excitement right now.”

While Christina, a 36-year-old resident of Charlotte, N.C., estimates she’s drinking no more now than prior to the pandemic, being confronted by the volume she’s had to drink—in the form of the empty wine bottles she’s throwing out at the end of the week—has caused her to reevaluate how much she wants to drink now and moving forward. At a bar or restaurant, “you don’t see the evidence piling up,” she explains.

In a recent survey of 3,000 Americans by Alcohol.org, an online resource from addiction treatment service provider American Addiction Centers, more than one-third of respondents admit they’re likely to drink more than usual in isolation. (One-fifth also reported stockpiling alcohol.) The survey didn’t provide any insight into why we’re drinking more, But Dr. William Kerr, PhD, a senior scientist with the Alcohol Research Group, told ELLE.com some people may be drinking to cope with the immense emotional and economic stress of the pandemic—which has cost many people their jobs, support systems, and even loved ones’ lives.

Being temporarily cut off from healthier coping mechanisms—such as going to the gym or getting a hug from your mom—may also drive people to drink, says Lisa Fucito, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She says drinking at home alone isn’t inherently risky, so long as it’s moderate. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define moderate drinking as up to one drink per day for women, and two drinks for men.) “Many people drank in this manner before the pandemic,” she points out. It’s stepping out of that moderate category that can be cause for concern, Fucito and Kerr agree.

Research has also shown that crises tend to lead to more widespread alcohol use and abuse. After the 2003 SARS outbreak, a study found hospital employees in Beijing, China, had a greater likelihood of alcohol abuse or dependence three years later, which was associated with quarantine or their work in high-risk settings. Another study found high rates of binge drinking years later among Manhattan residents, first responders, and others who were near the terrorist attacks on September 11. That correlation holds also for Hurricane Katrina, where research shows survivors experienced alcohol consumption-related problems at substantially higher rates.

The good news, according to Fucito, is that “the majority of people who increased their drinking during the pandemic should be able to transition back to lower levels of drinking when communities open back up,” much like people resume normal drinking habits after the holidays or a vacation.

Others will have to work harder to keep their drinking at a safe level, now and in the future.

“Drinking at home doesn’t come with some of the restrictions imposed by drinking at a bar or restaurant,” Fucito says. “The bar or restaurant doesn’t close. People don’t have to worry about getting home safely.” They’ll also have to reckon with why they’re drinking. “We know that negative motives—drinking to cope with unpleasant feelings or to conform with others—are associated with greater alcohol-related harm and risk of developing a … problem,” she says.

Isolation is also uniquely challenging for people in recovery. While support group meetings like Alcoholics Anonymous have moved online, the quarantine has made it much more difficult for addicts to access the services they need, and there are reports that waitlists for recovery programs are ballooning.

But for now, many people are willing to give themselves a pass on things they might not otherwise do given the extraordinary times we’re living through. “I’m drinking more now because there’s only so much work, reading, Netflix, and exercise I can do in one day,” Melissa says. After all, we’re all doing the best we can.

Update: On May 7, Jane Doe 16 (as she’s known in a U.S. civil class action lawsuit) became the first Canadian to talk publicly about what she alleges was her experience with Nygård, in a joint interview with CBC and CTV News. Jane Doe 16 told the news outlets that she first met Nygård when she was 19-years-old, through her tennis instructor in the Bahamas. The woman says that she visited the founder’s home on the island three times, to play tennis and use the grounds; one of these times, she alleges Nygård drugged and raped her. “I had never felt that kind of pain before, and I was scared, but I was alone. And I couldn’t stop it,” she told the outlets. Her lawsuit alleges that after the rapes, the designer “threw money at her.”

For decades, Nygård has been known as a moderately-priced women’s wear label. Lately, it’s been making headlines for other reasons. In mid-February, a class action lawsuit full of disturbing allegations was filed against the company’s eponymous founder, 78-year-old Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygård. In the civil suit, which was filed in New York, 10 women allege that Nygård “recruited, lured, and enticed young, impressionable, and often impoverished children and women, with cash payments and false promises of lucrative modelling opportunities” when his real intent was rape and sexual assault. In late February, Nygård stepped down as company chairman after the FBI and NYPD raided his New York City headquarters.

The allegations in this civil suit have not been proven in court and Ken Frydman, a spokesperson for Nygård International, says they are “completely false, without foundation and are vigorously denied.”

The story behind the allegations has many twists and turns: here’s everything you need to know about Peter Nygård, the allegations against him and what has happened since the lawsuit was filed.

Who is Peter Nygård?

In short, the founder of the fashion brand Nygård International. He immigrated to Winnipeg from Helsinki at age 10, and describes his life as a “rags to riches” story: in 1967, he purchased a small women’s clothier for a few thousand dollars and relaunched it as the Nygård fashion brand. Today, it’s an international fashion company headquartered in Winnipeg, with global headquarters in New York City, overseeing the brands Slims, Peter Nygård, Bianca Nygård, Tan Jay, Alia, Allison Daley and multiple private labels, sold in standalone and department stores. At the height of its success, Nygård International was the largest producer of women’s apparel in Canada. In 2015, Canadian Business estimated the brand’s founder to have a net worth of $777 million.

In his personal life, Nygård has been described as “Canada’s Hugh Hefner,” often traveling with multiple young models who were reportedly his “paid girlfriends.” He dated Anna Nicole Smith and, according to the New York Times, has fathered 10 children with eight different women. Crucial to that playboy reputation is Nygård Cay, a five-acre private “luxury resort” in the Bahamas that the mogul built in 1987. It has over 20 themed cabanas, a helipad, replicas of Mayan temples that spew volcanic smoke, and, according to The Times, a human aquarium featuring topless women dressed as mermaids. The expansive resort was featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and past guests include Michael Jackson, Prince Andrew, former U.S. president George H.W. Bush, Jessica Alba and Oprah Winfrey.

According to The Times, in the past 40 years, nine women from the U.S. and Canada have either sued or reported Nygård to authorities for sexual misconduct. He has never been convicted. In addition to the current class action suit, Nygård is facing two additional civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault, which were filed in Los Angeles in January. According to CBC, authorities in the Bahamas have said they are investigating allegations against Nygård first reported to them in July 2019. 

What are the allegations against him?

Ten women, all identified as Jane Does, are accusing Nygård and his company of operating a “sex trafficking ring” that resulted in the rapes and sexual assaults of young women and girls. According to the complaint, Nygård would regularly host “pamper parties” in the Bahamas and at his property in California, designed to “both promote the Nygard Companies’ brand and facilitate commercial sex acts.” The complainants describe being promised manicures, pedicures and massages, as well as the potential of landing modelling gigs with the fashion brand.

Most of the alleged assaults listed occurred between 2008 and 2015 in the Bahamas. Multiple Jane Does say they were under the age of 16, the country’s age of consent, when they were invited to attend one of Nygård’s pamper parties and allegedly sexually assaulted or raped by him, in some cases, the women say, after being given alcohol or illicit drugs. Multiple Jane Does also say they were virgins at the time, and their allegations are graphic and disturbing. The complaint also alleges that the Nygård company kept a database of more than 7,500 underage women and girls.

Following the alleged assaults, multiple Jane Does say they were given cash, in some cases more than US$5,000, by Nygård employees (for context, the Times noted that minimum wage in the Bahamas is $210 per week). All but one of the complainants are citizens of the Bahamas.

The complaint claims that Nygård’s “sex trafficking scheme” has been ongoing for decades. It also alleges that company employees helped to suppress the women and girls assaulted, including participation in “tactics of violence, intimidation, bribery, and payoffs.”

Under the U.S. Trafficking Victim Protection Act, the statute of limitations expires 10 years after the incident occurred, or—in the case of minors–10 years after the victim reaches the age of 18. The lawsuit argues the statute of limitations in this case should be extended because, though the 10 Jane Does “pursued their rights diligently,” they “were impeded because of a combination of force, threats of force, shame, embarrassment, fear, political and law enforcement corruption.”

Who is Louis Bacon and what does he have to do with all this?

Louis Bacon is a U.S. hedge fund billionaire. He also lives next door to Nygård in the Bahamas—though as the Times explained, these neighbours “had little in common except for extreme wealth and a driveway.” Nygård and Bacon have been embroiled in a decade-long battle which began with a land dispute and has escalated to include Nygård accusing Bacon of insider trading and being a member of the Klu Klux Klan, and Bacon accusing Nygård of plotting to kill him. As the Times reports, Nygård and Bacon have filed at least 25 lawsuits against each other in five jurisdictions. The most recent was a suit filed by Nygård in November 2019 alleging that Bacon hired lawyers and investigators to bribe and influence women to file false reports.

According to Frydman, Nygård’s lawyer, the class action lawsuit was something Nygård expected and predicted. “This is just the latest in a 10+ year string of attempts to try to destroy the reputation of a man through false statements,” Frydman told Chatelaine in an email. It’s definitely a complicated situation: In October, Times reporters spoke with two women at the centre of a previous sexual assault lawsuit against Nygård that was financially linked to Bacon. The women said that despite their previous claims, they had actually never met Nygård and they had been paid to fabricate their story (a statement that is contested by other parties involved).

What happens next?

Lisa Haba, one of the class action lawyers, says this suit is different from those in the past. “We’re in the heart of the #MeToo movement and as such, women and children have a different voice than before,” she says. “Where before they were silenced, now people are listening when they step forward.” She adds that a class action suit provides “strength in numbers.”

Since filing the lawsuit in February, Haba says her team has heard from approximately 50 new individuals who have shared their experiences involving Nygård. Haba is currently corroborating the accounts, and says that multiple individuals who have come forward have divulged details—such as information about a particular room, a bed or the way a door locked—that were not made public. According to co-counsel Greg Gutzler, “the allegations span four decades and three continents, dating to 1977….We’ve had women from five countries contact us with stories of abuse, including the Bahamas, United States, Canada, the U.K. and China. More than 20 are Canadians, from Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg.”

As noted by the Globe and Mail, previous allegations didn’t hinder the fashion company’s success. This time, however, multiple retailers—including Canadian retailer TSC (Today’s Shopping Choice), as well as Dillard’s in the U.S.—have pulled Nygård clothing from shelves and cancelled remaining orders.

Nygård’s lawyers have requested a conference with New York judge Edgardo Ramos, and have stated that they plan to file a motion to dismiss the complaint.

According to a statement by Nygård spokesperson Frydman, following the lawsuit and Times investigation “a significant Nygård customer ceased doing business with the company” and one of Nygård’s financial lenders demanded immediate payment of its outstanding credit. On March 10, Nygård announced that it would be restructuring, seeking financial support and protection by filing a notice of intention (NOI) to file a proposal under the Canadian Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. “In response to these pressures, the Company has determined that the NOI is the best option to provide the protection needed while all alternatives are assessed,” Frydman said in the statement.

“The biggest day on the internet ever,” at least according to Jumperoo62, a commenter on the British gossip forum Tattle.life, took place last November. The rabbit hole of a site where 53,000-plus members dissect the lives of influencers with the meticulous, if selective, attention of Renaissance cartographers was consistently critical and often cruel.

The Tattle Lifers were never disinterested. They were always distant observers. Until last November, when the site went from being a lesser moon in the influencer solar system to playing a central role in a rapidly unraveling series of events one commenter dubbed Instamumistan. “Inject this shit into my veins,” wrote Swipe Up! “Better than a soap opera,” wrote Plinkplonk. It was also, quite possibly, one of the worst days of Clemmie Hooper’s life.

At the time, Hooper, a 35-year-old midwife and mother of four with blunt bangs and attractive features had around 660,000 followers on Instagram, where she posted as @mother_of_ daughters (or MOD).

Her husband, Simon, a sometimes goofy, scruffily handsome operations director for a consultancy firm, drew around a million followers to his own account, @father_ of_daughters. Clemmie also had a birth-focused podcast, a best-selling book called How to Grow a Baby and Push It Out, and a blog, Gas & Air, where she shared birth stories, promoted body positivity, and offered honest-sounding tidbits of her own life as a mom (like admitting in one vacation blog post “I’d rather be at work”).

On Gas & Air’s About page, Clemmie can still be found exuding the trademark mumfluencer blend of aspirational and approachable, seated at an uncluttered desk amid a palette of millennial pink and plants. On the wall behind her is a framed drawing of a woman with similar bangs and the scrawled words “Be Kind.”

Tattle.life, though, presented an inverse reality. On threads with titles like “Part time parents full time grifters,” commenters took issue with Clemmie’s mothering, her outfits, her weight, the decor of her home, her recipe for avocado toast, even her spelling (“Chest of draws?” wrote Breakdance Badass. “That’s not dyslexia it’s is [sic] stupidity.” “Utter laziness,” agreed Mustard). Even comments that came to Clemmie’s defense were often tempered with disdain. “I found her the most likeable she’s been in ages,” GreyWolf wrote about one video. “Almost fun. But she’s still a bloody user influencer.”

Then there was AliceinWanderlust: “I agree her passion shines through when she talks about her work,” she wrote about MOD in February of last year. “I for one found her menstrual cup post really insightful and learnt loads,” she wrote a few days later.

A commenter eventually asked outright what others had danced around: Was AliceinWanderlust Clemmie? Alice vehemently denied the accusation—the idea was so absurd she posted a ROTFL emoji. But in March of last year, a Tattle.life moderator posted to announce “Alice” had been banned, citing “suspect things logged on the back end.” A few months later, the same moderator explained that site administrators had noticed AliceinWanderlust, who’d once claimed all her family could afford was “camping in Devon,” logging in to Tattle.life from a tropical island Clemmie was also Instagramming from at the time.

The problem was that on top of creating an account to defend herself, Clemmie was using it to put down other influencers, even ones she knew personally. “Smug as fuck that #gifted ski trip made me want to stick frozen icicles in my eyes,” she wrote about a post from interior design blogger @pinkhouseliving, whom she’d previously collaborated with on a post. “Candice is often really aggressive and always brings it back to race, priveldge [sic] and class because she knows no one will argue with that,” she’d posted about Candice Brathwaite, an influencer Clemmie had invited onto her podcast to discuss the high death rate of pregnant black women.

It took a while for all this information to reach Clemmie’s fellow mumfluencers, but once it did, they took to Instagram en masse to denounce her. “Dear Alice,” wrote blogger Laura Rutherford. “You’ve looked me in the eye and asked me how I’m doing when I’ve been at my lowest. How dare you?”

This, then, was Instamumistan. Sure, the commenter who likened the endless scroll of melodramatic gossip to a protracted war was participating in a particularly internet-y form of hyperbole. But it was a virtual explosion few could look away from. The story spread from Tattle.life to Instagram to mainstream newspapers and back again. Clemmie did post a brief apology in her Instagram Story, explaining that after coming across threads about her family on Tattle.life, she’d become “extremely paranoid” and had opened an anonymous account. “When the users started to suspect it was me, I made the mistake of commenting about others,” she wrote. “I am just so sorry.”

This did nothing to stem the outrage. “It’s a classic case of someone who’s been victimized turning perpetrator,” an “insider” told Grazia Daily. “She got sucked in, but I think she started to enjoy it.” It was like a digital-age fable—Hooper, who Tattle posters had criticized repeatedly for what they saw as displays of arrogance and faux-kindness, not to mention for shilling so many products they couldn’t afford, had been amongst them all that time. The day after the news broke, two people on Tattle.life wrote that they’d dreamed about it.

The timeline Clemmie offered in her apology didn’t entirely add up. She’d joined shortly before a thread about her even existed, and her first comments were exclusively about another influencer, Cash Carraway. (In the process, she actually helped reveal a separate poster as Carraway herself. “The truth always comes out in the end, Cash,” AliceinWanderlust wrote.) But undoubtedly, as she admitted in her apology, she “got lost in this online world.” Her sock puppet account had gone so far as to describe Simon as a “class A twat, I can’t believe she puts up with his nonsense.”

Amid the chaos, Simon put up a post of his own: “I’ve seen firsthand what three years of being attacked online can do to a person and the dark places it can drive you to—I guess whereas I can happily ignore it all, she couldn’t…. This has impacted our family and it will take some time to recover.” Two days later, he returned to social media with a video titled “Hairbands: Where the Hell Do They All Go?!” Clemmie’s account has been inactive ever since.

Reading through AliceinWanderlust’s posts now feels like watching the part of the horror movie where the woman starts down the basement stairs. There aren’t any good excuses for what she did, but it’s easy to imagine how it happened. How a cloak of anonymity might seem particularly appealing to someone who’s made her “real life” public, and how attacks about your parenting could be particularly hard to slough off. How you’d scramble to slip back into invisibility after being discovered, feeling a vertiginous dread that aspects you’d rather keep hidden—your spitefulness, perhaps, or the person you are late at night after the kids are asleep, your face lit only by the blue light of your phone—might be revealed.

But I don’t actually know if this was the case for Clemmie. When I reached out to her PR person, whom she shares with her husband, I was told they weren’t doing any press. None of the other influencers involved would speak to me, either. What I did eventually learn, though, is that while the generally accepted story line has been that what happened with Clemmie was an aberration, it’s actually quite common. “In the last couple of years, I’ve given interviews regarding this exact situation,” says Crystal Abidin, PhD, a digital anthropologist and ethnographer of internet cultures at Curtin University in Australia. Alice Wright, who runs GOMI, a U.S.-based precursor to Tattle.life, told me the same thing has happened various times on her site.

The more I scrolled through Clemmie’s digital detritus, in fact, the more her story seemed to represent not only the pressures experienced by influencers, but the insecurities, incentives, and impulses all parents must navigate as they engage with platforms that have the ability to make otherwise mature adults act like teenagers. Platforms, moreover, filled with unknown risks and rewards hardly any of us can resist. Writer and influencer Jordan Reid, also known as @ramshackleglam, laughed when I asked her about this, as if it were so self-evident it hardly bore discussing. “I mean, I’m 38 years old and I put sparkle filter on my face,” she says.

By 2010, almost a quarter of children worldwide had begun their digital lives via sonograms their parents posted online, according to a survey conducted by the internet security firm AVG. By the time the average child turned five, a more recent British study found, nearly 1,500 images of them had been shared. The content we post of our kids is the kind we’d never post of a friend without asking. We show them on the floor crying or dancing by themselves, unaware they’re being photographed. We show them smiling in the bath, a peach emoji over their butts. We do this to build community, to show off, to allay boredom, to build our brand. But we also do this because our norms have been shaped by parent influencers, who post photos of their kids for the same reasons the rest of us do, along with one additional incentive: money.

“Baby pics drive clicks,” a recent New York Times opinion piece quipped. Or as Clemmie told a reporter in 2018, regarding her two youngest children and social media engagement numbers: “Anything with the twins is amazing.”

There are now 4.5 million mom influencers in the U.S. according to Mom 2.0 Summit, a professional conference for parenting influencers, and their impact is “like word of mouth on steroids,” the president and founder of a creative agency told Money magazine in 2018. Two years ago, when I posted the first photo of my then one-month-old son on Facebook, it felt almost obligatory. I’d written it on my to-do list, in between figuring out some details of my maternity leave and buying a breast pump. It got twice as many likes as anything else I’d ever put up.

But it doesn’t take much digging to discover why one might abstain. Leah Plunkett, the author of Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online, told me her concerns fall into three categories: The first involves putting your child at risk of criminal acts like kidnapping or identity theft. (Studies estimate that by 2030, “sharenting” will be responsible for almost two-thirds of identity fraud against today’s children.)

The second issue is potentially subjecting kids to actions that are legal but invasive. Baby role-playing, for example, involves people reposting photos of children they’ve found online and offering them up for virtual adoption, pretending to be them, or passing them off as their own kids; there are over 37,000 Instagram posts tagged #babyrp. And the third is that creating a digital presence for children before they’ve had a chance to form their own sense of self can impede their ability to figure out who they are, embarrass them, or worse.

A 2019 Microsoft survey reported that 42 percent of teens in 25 countries have been bothered by something their parents posted about them. (This includes Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter, Apple, who once commented, after Paltrow posted a snap of the two of them, “Mom, we have discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent.”) Plunkett, who works as an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law and as a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, recently heard about a mom whose child, now in middle school, was bullied via printouts of a story the mom had long ago published on her blog.

For influencers whose livelihoods are tied to the way they package their family online, even thornier issues arise. “It’s a bit chilling, but the concept of a child being a brand extension does come into play,” says Catherine Archer, PhD, a communications researcher at Australia’s Murdoch University. There are also privacy concerns, as well as ethical and financial questions. Do you pay your child? Do children have rights to images of themselves?

Legislation like California’s Coogan Law, passed in 1939, stipulated that 15 percent of a child performer’s earnings be deposited into a trust, and codified matters like schooling, work hours, and time off for young entertainers, but there’s no current analogue for child social media stars. “Even if they are performing their everyday tasks, they really are stepping into a role that’s the equivalent of Shirley Temple on a movie set, with huge money attached,” Plunkett says. “We’ve always had kids performing labor in America. What’s new is that it’s harder to draw the line between what’s labor and what’s family life. Plus, everyone can now aspire to this, and with a 24/7 surveillance aspect.”

This is a standard trope of dystopian fiction, but if the last few years have made anything clear, it’s that not everyone finds this idea alarming. When I email Shannon Bird, a Utah mother-of-five whose Instagram account, @birdalamode, has 100,000 followers, she writes back to say she has displayed her kids’ lives from the second she went into labor, adding “think Truman Show.” (During the birth of her youngest daughter, last December, she posted an Instagram Story that included imagery of herself in a hospital gown, her feet in stirrups, a sparkly clip with the word “Baby” in her hair.)

Offering this kind of access into her life is partly how she’s attracted so many followers. That she shows herself doing things like calling 911 because her breastmilk had dried up in the middle of night (her husband was out of town and a police officer delivered formula) has also led her to become a popular hate-follow. On GOMI, where her thread has over 530 pages of comments, she’s been dubbed the “Mormon Courtney Love.”

“But there’s been a ton of good as well,” Bird says, explaining that after she announced she had nothing for her new daughter’s nursery, she received so many items that she’s still giving away extra car seats. “It keeps you wanting to post,” she says.

Her 911 call ended up getting picked up by People magazine and Inside Edition, but Bird also received emails telling her to kill herself, and as a result, when we spoke last January, she was two days into an Instagram hiatus. “I don’t want any negativity because I’m barely staying afloat,” she says. “I’ve never been this outnumbered by kids and life.”

When she told her kids she wouldn’t be taking pictures of them for a little while, they cheered. But she found it strange. “I feel a little out-of-body because as a mom, all I know is posting updates,” she says. A day later, she was back.

Influencer marketing, which last year was an $8 billion industry, was in many ways formed in the early aughts by women who, in the often isolating, endlessly liminal space of motherhood, began congregating online to write about the aspects of parenthood that Hooper once described as “this grey matter… of: ‘I’m not depressed, I’m just finding today particularly boring.’” Companies were looking for ways to reach mothers, who in the U.S. alone have spending power of $2.4 trillion; and mothers, who are three times more likely to be stay-at-home parents and many of whom left the work force ambivalently, became eager entrepreneurs.

“Mom bloggers gave birth to the influencer movement,” says Laura Mayes, a co-founder, with Carrie Pacini, of the mom influencer–focused conference Mom 2.0. There is, by the way, something almost over-obviously ironic about the idea that women, in search of community, or a voice built an industry that enabled them to monetize parenting—unpaid work that they were nonetheless disproportionately expected to perform—only for it to leave them open to even more intense criticism.

The argument commenters on sites like GOMI or TL tend to make is that influencers, by sharing so much, become fair game for criticism. By this logic, so are a lot of the rest of us, too. When I ask Mayes about whether she’s fielded questions from influencers about how their digital presence might impact their kids, she says that she has, though is quick to add that “It’s not just influencers. It’s all parents. Millions of mothers put their experiences and ideas out there on a variety of platforms.”

Some parents have responded by trying to keep their children unidentifiable online. Sara Gaynes Levy, a journalist and mother of a two-year-old, rarely shares photos of her daughter; when she does, her face isn’t visible. At first, this was at her husband’s request, but she’s come to share his worries about privacy. “I probably think more than the average parent about the longevity of this stuff,” she says. “I have an alarmist brain.” (Their decision to buy a baby monitor without Wi-Fi seemed less alarmist after videos emerged last December of people hacking into Amazon’s Ring home-security cameras and taunting children.)

Another woman, a documentary filmmaker, has sworn off social media altogether for the sake of her two kids. (She asked to remain anonymous “since obviously one of the reasons I’m not on social media is that I really like privacy.”) “We have no idea of the ramifications,” she says. “Who reads the fine print when you click okay on the terms of service? Not me.”

But the impact all this might have on kids later in life is still unclear. An article in the Atlantic about kids discovering their digital presence quoted one girl who was excited to find photos of her and her friends online—“We were like, ‘Whoa, we’re real people.’ ” (Admittedly, this statement can still be kind of haunting.) It’s also not certain whether social media is causing new problems, or if we’re just seeing the same old problems playing out in new, more widespread ways. The documentary filmmaker, for example, told me she’d started avoiding social media partly because she’d noted that her brother’s family, including his two teenagers, don’t even use cell phones, and “this is a family with no kind of psychological distress.” But while growing up in the 1990s, I knew lots of families in psychological distress, and none had cell phones.

“I hate the narrative that the internet is bad for you,” says author and pundit Molly Jong-Fast. I’d reached out to her because long before the internet existed, she’d grown up with a mother, novelist Erica Jong, who was such a prototypical sharenter she’d written about the first time Molly got her period. “I hate it because it’s easy.”

It also, obviously, offers all sorts of benefits. One 2015 study found that 62 percent of parents actually said social media helped them worry less. And when Laurel Pantin, the fashion features director for InStyle magazine, experienced postpartum anxiety and depression after the birth of her son, she used the platform “like Tinder, almost,” she says. “I was reaching out to random people who’d recently had babies. It connected me to the outside world at [a point] when in reality I was very isolated and vulnerable.” Her feed broadcasts pics of her now two-year-old son, her new baby, selfies, and occasional paid posts to over 39,000 followers, but she follows a set of self-imposed rules. “I just try to not put things out there that might later be embarrassing for a child, I try not to embarrass my husband, and I try to be as honest as possible,” she says.

This approach, of assuming engagement is inevitable but trying to do so on one’s own terms, is one Abidin has observed among numerous mom influencers. “A lot of reporters who interview me have in mind this moral panic angle about how influencers are violating the privacy rights of their children,” Abidin says. “But many parenting influencers are doing their due diligence in trying to change the norms of the business to make it work for them, which I find healthy, because this is not a phenomenon that is reversible.”

An odd thing I noticed as I paid closer attention to the way I engaged with Instagram was that the closer a person’s presentation of her parenthood hewed to my own aspirations, the less I was able to recognize the artifice. One woman, an influencer with around 18,000 followers who seemed to have experienced new motherhood as a time of gauzy, earthy ease, often posted photos of herself doing things like breastfeeding while leaning against a table full of vegetables at a natural food store, or cradling her infant in a camper van while on a road trip. The latter sounded both emotionally draining and logistically confounding. Where was the car seat? How did she do laundry? Yet looking at her photos, I still believed them.

Even some influencers, intimately familiar with the curation that goes on behind the scenes, aren’t immune to such habits. Reid, aka @ramshackleglam, a mother of two, tells me that since her marriage ended in 2018, she’s started using Instagram more, and while “I’m not proud to say it,” she says, she now finds photos of happy-seeming families irritating. “It makes me think that maybe if I had just tried harder, I could have had that, too,” she says. A friend eventually pointed out that her feed likely used to make other people feel the same way. “That really struck me—that I could have created those emotions in people without meaning to, or believing I had the ability to.”

Reid, who has 100,000 Instagram followers, has never been comfortable with the platform. “I want it to die,” she says. In part, her antipathy stems from her belief that it shapes people’s interactions with their kids. Not long ago, she watched a mother notice her children doing something cute, take out her phone, and ask them to do it again, but in front of a prettier wall. “I’m sure I have done the same thing, but seeing it from the outside was a little watershed moment,” she says.

Reid recently coauthored The Big Activity Book for Digital Detox, though she admits, “I’m better at writing about it than doing it.” She lives in Malibu, “a walking, talking Kodak moment all the time,” and often takes her kids to the beach. One day last, as they arrived, Reid realized she’d forgotten her phone. She was about to turn around but changed her mind. Instead, her kids made castles out of sticks, and nobody saw them but her. She hadn’t played with them like that in a long time.

A version of this article originally appeared in the May 2020 issue of ELLE.

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From the virus that brought you tie-dye sweatsuits, #WFH posts, and a stimulus check that barely covers the cost of existing, a new quarantine phenomenon has emerged from the shadows of the room you haven’t left all day: Zoom dating.

The newest form of virtual romance essentially combines two of my least favorite things: first dates and strangers trying to talk to me on the internet.

Sure, it has its perks. If my date is a serial killer, there’s a 0% chance I’ll be murdered via video chat. I can secretly text my friends updates offscreen. I control the lighting and angles of my camera, and above all else, I don’t have to shave my legs.

But while all of this may seem like a dream come true, there are many horrible factors of Zoom dating that often slip the mind when finally setting up a time to talk. Here are some things I never thought I’d have to worry about on a first date in my life.

The Pre-Date Prep

I normally allow myself a few hours to get ready for a date, setting aside enough time to work at a leisurely pace but not enough time to sit and overthink all of my choices. I have a standard date look that says “I look cute, but you don’t know for certain that I got all dolled up for you. For all you know, I could’ve gone to brunch with my friends earlier.”

So what am I supposed to look like when he knows I’ve been sitting around all day binge-watching Ozark in the same sweats from yesterday?

If I put on a full face of makeup, it’ll look like I got all fancy to sit in front of a computer screen. If I don’t wear makeup, he’ll be able to see the acne that has somehow erupted from the surface of my skin despite not wearing makeup for the past month. So I usually settle for a compromise: concealer, mascara and a silent prayer that he’s far-sighted. Also, how many days can I go without washing my hair before it starts to show through my computer’s camera?

The Arrival

On a first date, I tend to aim for arriving five minutes early. Why? If he already beat me there, it means he cares about being on time. If he arrives after me, I have a few minutes to compose myself and run to the bathroom for a last-minute mirror check.

But what’s an acceptable time to arrive at a Zoom date? Do you show up a few minutes early and stare at your reflection, wondering if your aforementioned makeup looks too crusty on camera? Do you show up a minute or two late knowing there’s literally no excuse for not being on time because really, what else are you doing? The 5-minute rule goes out the window, and I truly have no idea what to tell you.

The Date

In my experience, most first dates have some sort of activity so you don’t have to sit in awkward silence and stare at each other, trying to remember what he said he does for a living. I’ve been bowling, I’ve gone to sports games, but I haven’t sat in front of my laptop and awkwardly asked, “How was your day today?” to a man who probably threw on a clean shirt 30 seconds before logging onto Zoom.

The Goodbye

What you do at the end of a good date is entirely your choice. But how do you end a date that went well when you can’t show any physical sign of affection? On Zoom dates there’s no kiss, no getting invited back to his place—all you have left is the awkward scramble to not be the last one left on the call.

Am I supposed to wave? Throw up some peace signs? Pretend my internet is glitching?

Whatever the answer is, there’s no viable solution to the moment that any good videochat date can turn awkward. Here’s to hoping he wants to Zoom again… I guess?

Decades before Fleabag snogged a priest, before a Snuggie-wrapped Liz Lemon dined on night cheese, and before Lena Dunham sat naked in a bathtub eating a cupcake on Girls, Aline Kominsky-Crumb was bringing the messy interior lives of women to life in her comics.

As an underground comics artist in the 1970s, Kominsky-Crumb pioneered a style that was equal parts confessional and caustic, deeply honest, and darkly funny. Unapologetically autobiographical, her work has chronicled her stifling childhood on Long Island, her first sexual encounter as a teenager (and her many subsequent run-ins, both good and bad), and her relationship with everything from wine to wrinkles to Robert Crumb, her famous cartoonist husband. Her work is unflinching and radical, and paved the way for generations of artists to tackle what it means to be a woman, without a filter.

“At the time when I was doing it, it was just what I wanted to do. I didn’t think about it [as pioneering] at all,” said Kominsky-Crumb, speaking by phone from the village in the South of France where she’s lived for the past 29 years. It’s taken a more recent outpouring of adulation from younger artists, she says, but now, “I do realize that I was a trailblazer.”

Kominsky-Crumb, 72, is the subject of a solo exhibition at Kayne Griffin Corcoran gallery in Los Angeles, running through May 9. The show opened in the gallery’s physical space just as the rapid spread of COVID-19 wiped out group gatherings and much of public life. Luckily, the show lives on digitally through an online viewing room, where all 19 of the works can be seen from the safety and comfort of home.

The exhibit features works spanning her prolific 50-year career, including mixed-media drawings alongside her comics. Her signature black-and-white scratchy cartoons can provoke a strong reaction, but they’re also unexpectedly warm, in the way that it’s comforting to see submerged parts of yourself finally laid bare. Kominsky-Crumb’s work also feels relatable in its raunchiness, especially now that most of us are homebound, horny, and desperate for distraction. Be honest: Whom among us hasn’t wondered how many calories are in a cheese enchilada while sitting on the toilet?

A highlight of the show is “Dream House,” a 30-page cartoon that traces Kominsky-Crumb’s life from her miserable childhood in a middle-class Jewish household on Long Island through her meeting Robert and relocating to France along with their daughter Sophie in the 1990s. The depiction of her upbringing, especially her parents, is brutal.

“I was really anger-motivated. I had to get that stuff out,” Kominsky-Crumb told ELLE.com. Growing up, she never felt like she fit in—she was always too big, too Jewish, too poor. “I was very much an outsider and I developed a critique of that world at a very young age,” she says.

“Dream House” also traces Kominsky-Crumb’s escape from Long Island to New York City, where she took art classes and leaned into the freewheeling, bohemian lifestyle of the 1960s. She stopped shaving, experimented with free love and drugs, and felt alive.

“I was a real hippie,” she says. “It was very anti-bourgeois and anti-establishment.”

That ethos changed her art forever. “My desire to do comics was, instead of doing art for rich people, I wanted to do art that people read on the toilet,” Kominsky-Crumb says. Her disdain for the “elitist and horrible” art scene in New York drove her to leave Cooper Union, where she had been studying, for the University of Arizona. After graduating in the early 1970s, she headed north to San Francisco, the focal point of the counterculture, where she developed her style as a cartoonist in a time when there were very few other female cartoonists. Soon after she arrived, she found a women’s art collective that was putting together one of the first feminist comics produced entirely by women, called Wimmen’s Comix, and started contributing. The collection dealt with topics that were still quite radical at the time: abortion, queer life, rape.“It was like we were inventing a new profession for women, and a new voice for women,” Kominsky-Crumb says.

In 1971, she met Robert “R.” Crumb, who was already an established underground cartoonist lauded for his satirical, highly detailed comics. Their partnership would have a lasting effect on Kominsky-Crumb’s work, and the two have collaborated on various comic strips and books over the course of their decades-long relationship.

After a few years of contributing to Wimmen’s Comix, Kominsky-Crumb split from the group in 1975. Some of her work around sex and bodies had been deemed too demeaning (one of her early comics, “Bunch Plays with Herself,” features her alter ego Bunch picking her butt, popping a pimple, and masturbating). Her relationship with Crumb (who has faced criticism for his depictions of women, violence, and racial stereotypes) also didn’t sit well with some of the hard-line feminists at Wimmen’s Comix, so she and the other “bad women” of the group, including cofounder Diane Noomin, started a new women’s comic called Twisted Sisters.

Now she had carte blanche to be as vulgar as she pleased. But don’t mistake her work as crass for crassness’ sake—much of her work is about seeking the approval that evaded her in childhood, grappling with her own insecurities, and the broader expectations society foists on women. “On a deeper personal, psychological level, I realized it was like, ‘Okay, I’m disgusting, will you still love me?…I have zits and warts and I smell and everything like that. Will you still love me?’”

Also on view in the exhibition are colorful portraits Kominsky-Crumb drew of her mother’s hairdresser, Cookie, and the friends she made after moving to Florida. The hair is big, the nails long, the jewelry stacked. “[Cookie] was such an unbelievable character. I would always go down and hang around with my mother in [the salon], and these women would come in and they’d want to tell their whole life story,” Kominsky-Crumb recalls. “They needed to confess. And I would sort of become invisible because I would be in there drawing and stuff. They would just tell me their whole life stories.”

Kominsky-Crumb realized that in a lot of ways, those women could have been her. “I was raised to be like them and part of me is like them,” she said. Camaraderie and empathy run through the caricature of these portraits. “They’re critical, at the same time, there’s a bit of admiration, so I try to tread that line.”

As she’s gotten older, her subject matter has kept pace, with stories about turning 40, becoming a grandparent, and dealing with a receding hairline. One panel in “Of What Use Is an Old Bunch?” from 2013 lists the cosmetic enhancements she’s turned to, including teeth implants, hair extensions, and Botox—all with zero apology.

Whether it’s her portraits or comics, Kominsky-Crumb’s work still feels radical this many decades later for the way she turns taboos into cultural commentary simply by calling our attention to them. Women are nothing if not complex creatures. We fart, we eat, we fight, we have sex—and we have all kinds of feelings about all if it.

These days, Kominsky-Crumb cares less about shock. She’ll leave that to the new guard of provocateurs, like Dunham, whose work she said makes her own look “mild.”

“Maybe I broke through on one level, but where people have taken it now is unbelievable,” she reflected. After surviving colon cancer, Kominsky-Crumb now spends much of her time doing yoga and spending time with her grandchildren in her adopted French hometown. She still works on the occasional story—a collaboration with R. Crumb on a certain president is forthcoming—but it’s on her terms. “I’ve evolved my own style over the years,” she says. “I’m not in rebellion of anything anymore.

While weddings are the backdrop for most of our favourite rom-coms, from Runaway Bride to The Wedding Planner and Bridesmaids, there has yet to be one depicting how to handle getting hitched during a global pandemic. Julia and J-Lo, where you at? 

Wedding season is upon us but as we continue to practice social distancing and stay home in a collective effort to flatten the curve and grapple with uncertainty of when the COVID-19 pandemic will end, the industry is at a standstill. 

Canadians spend on average $31,000 on their wedding, according to a 2019 survey by The Knot, while a 2020 WeddingWire Report notes that couples hire a minimum of fifteen vendors and prepare one to two years in advance. From stationary to catering to florists to DJs to photographers, wedding professionals play a vital role in creating a memorable day for the happy couple and their closest friends and family. A wedding is also often the only event where this select group of people will all be in the same place.

It’s easy to trivialize a celebratory event in the middle of a crisis, but in recognizing the impact the coronavirus has had, and will continue to have, on the economy, it’s impossible to ignore how hard the $5 billion dollar wedding industry in Canada has been hit.

The financial and emotional losses have not only affected brides and grooms, but also the small businesses that rely on this peak season to stay afloat the rest of the year. 

I spoke with six women across the country, from Nova Scotia to Nunavut, who share their experiences—not only the hardships, but the creative ways they’ve adapted in this challenging climate—of how COVID-19 has impacted their weddings or livelihood. The silver lining: love really does conquer (almost) all. 

Interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.  

“Coronavirus cancelled our wedding, so we exchanged vows alone by the lake”

“My wedding day is a day I have always dreamed of. I know everyone says that, but I mean it. I have been planning this day and envisioning all aspects of it for as long as I can remember. I was just over a week away from my dream becoming a reality when a global pandemic happened and for us, our only option was to postpone our wedding for the safety of our loved ones.

We decided to postpone before we were told we had to, which helped a bit in that we felt we had some control in the situation. It was a really hard decision and I was devastated but once I had run out of tears to cry, I was back in planning mode and trying to decide what we would do instead. Our plan B was an entire mini wedding with our immediate family at a Toronto restaurant. We’d have the ceremony, followed by an intimate dinner. But the restaurants were forced to close shortly after we cancelled our plan A wedding so we were back to the drawing board. 

Financially, because our wedding date was planned for March 21, 2020, most of our vendors were already paid in full so we are out thousands of dollars for the time being, but it will be transferred to our new date. For vendors that are not able to make our new date, we unfortunately have lost those non-refundable deposits. Our guests were also on our mind right when we postponed and we felt guilty for the money that they may also lose. A lot of our guests were flying in from out of town, even a few from Europe. For most of them, hotels gave full refunds and airlines have issued credits so my hope is that it didn’t impact them too heavily.

We decided to make plan C just about us, in a place that we hoped would not be impacted—outside. We wrote some vows, got all dressed up, made some homemade wedding bands out of rope and ventured down to a little beach on Lake Ontario.

We exchanged vows and said ‘I Do’ before slipping our new rings onto each other’s fingers. Our friend captured the moment from a distance to show our families and the rest is history! We didn’t have an officiant present so we aren’t officially married but our vows were so real and raw and made me realize that’s all you really need. We are so close with our families and want them to be there to witness our official ceremony, whenever that day will come. I never in a million years dreamed of my ‘wedding day’ looking like this, but it was perfect.

Coincidentally, I’m also a wedding planner, and year two of my business is looking much different than anticipated. Almost all of my weddings for 2020 have been postponed into 2021. This will definitely have an impact on my bottom line, but having the unique perspective of experiencing what my couples are currently facing in postponing a day they have spent years planning, I’m heartbroken for them and my only goal is to ease their stress. All deposits are transferable to their new date and there is no fee to reschedule. Wedding and event vendors are being hit hard because of the intense event ban that is affecting so many businesses, big and small. I am fortunate to work with amazing couples and hope for a prosperous 2021 when all of this is (hopefully) behind us. It’s a hard time for everyone right now—all we can do is work with compassion and kindness and do the best we can.”

—Paige Cunningham, founder of Paige Caroline Weddings and Events, Hamilton, Ont.

“Our elopement from Nunavut was cancelled, but an even bigger surprise awaited” 

“I’ve heard planning a wedding isn’t for the faint of heart. This has proven to be an understatement. I consider myself the imaginative and resourceful type, the one you would want by your side as you plan your wedding. Surprisingly, when it was my turn to tie the knot, I had a reaction that revealed itself as crippling anxiety. My partner and I come from large east-coast families so the guest list turned into a wild monster overnight and we had a really difficult time making edits we both agreed on. Logistically, it was also challenging trying to plan a wedding from Nunavut. After a long and agonizing battle, my partner and I agreed to elope. 

We planned to exchange our vows and have a civil ceremony on March 20, 2020 in Old Montreal, just the two of us. Everything was in place,the boutique hotel, the lavish cheese plate and wine to be delivered, the intimate ceremony, topping it off with an indulgent dinner we would feast on while playing footsie under the table.

In the days leading up to our elopement, Iqaluit, Nunavut (where we live) announced a work-from-home transition. Our daycare closed, and both my partner and I were now working full-time from home with our year-and-a-half old daughter, Greta. I work as a Project Manager for the Nunavut Film Development Corporation and Michael works for the Government of Nunavut as a Manager of Public Agencies.We made the difficult, but necessary, decision to cancel our dreamy elopement. That was tough. Selfishly, I still grieve that three-day weekend. I still mourn the outfit I had planned to wear, those Edie Sedgwick earrings, that baby blue floral shift dress. I grieve the incredibly rare opportunity I had to share three full days with the love of my life, alone, in our beloved favourite city, celebrating us.  

The hotel in Montreal cancelled on us as the pandemic affected Quebec earlier than Nunavut.They shut down due to COVID-19 the week of March 16 and gave us a full refund. By that Friday, WestJet had cancelled its flights across Canada, Air Canada dramatically reduced its routes and the government of Nunavut urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel. We received a flight credit and cancelled the childcare we’d arranged for Greta.

The stream of emails that showered my inbox with kind words and support from friends and family has been overwhelming. In light of what is happening globally, we are very much the lucky ones. Our wedding can wait. COVID-19 has really put into perspective the importance of community, gathering, face-to-face interaction and the generosity and kindness of neighbours to help in hard times. The humanity in it all is quite moving.

In the meantime, while we wait for our postponed elopement next summer, and just to keep things interesting, we remain devoted to growing this COVID baby in my ever-growing belly to add to the big boom. Surprise!” 

—Corinne Dunphy, project manager, Iqaluit, Nunavut

“Our cut flower business has taken a crushing blow, forcing our Picton location to close”

“We are in the midst of something I could never have imagined and I was completely ill-prepared for. Most small businesses aren’t sitting on extra revenue, often we invest all money back into the business, whether it’s buying more inventory or expanding the business. In the summer of 2015  we opened a second location in Prince Edward County, in addition to our Toronto shop, to accommodate the growing demand for weddings and events. It was a financial stretch creating more debt, but the current season was supposed to help pay off most of it. 

Cut to this unbelievable event and my business is suffering tremendously with a number of wedding postponements and event cancellations. 

One of the things we did immediately was to close our retail locations; now we’re working on offering more products for online purchase. Our Toronto manager, Deanna, offers a limited number of weekly flower arrangements for delivery. She handles all operations from start to finish by herself, even though the demand is far greater. I can sleep at night because I believe I’m making decisions from an ethical place. Limiting the number of employees down to one until business resumes was challenging, but ensures Deanna’s health and safety. She controls all the variables and doesn’t have to worry about sharing space with someone who rode the subway that morning.  

Deanna has poured her heart and soul into her designs because people are needing to spread the love more than ever. We believe flowers help bring comfort and support mental health. 

Our Picton location is fully closed until further notice. May and June have been the hardest hit with the greatest number of cancellations and I anticipate more will come. 

Another way we are pivoting and trying to recoup the loss is by growing more flowers at the farm in Sophiasburgh, Prince Edward County. We hope to supply future weddings with dahlias, zinnias, cosmos, scabiosa and grasses that have been sprouting under grow lights and will be planted out after the last frost in May.

I am lucky in comparison to others who have to close their businesses completely. My heart goes out to so many folks who are experiencing real pain, those who have lost a loved one or the people on the front lines. As a business owner, I’m not a stranger to unexpected hardships and I’ve learned to adapt but this is uncharted territory. I think it’s important to not let fear and anxiety govern the thought process, easier said than done, but for me I have to stay positive and I have to focus on the things I can control.

For me, COVID-19 is offering a major lesson that there are no guarantees—and that’s going to naturally inform every decision I make moving forward. I never want to feel this vulnerable in business again. It’s also an opportunity to take inventory on what’s working and what’s not.”

—Alison Westlake, owner of Coriander Girl, Prince Edward County, Ont.

“My bachelorette was cancelled and we’re facing postponement of our east coast wedding”  

“I’d been looking forward to my bachelorette in Charleston, South Carolina for the last nine months. Being in my thirties, and having a collection of friends across multiple provinces who are all getting married, buying homes, or having children, I was thrilled that ten ladies were able to book a long weekend off to fly down to Charleston for an epic celebration

In early March, I thought coronavirus may affect our international flights the weekend of April 23, 2020, so we planned to switch to a domestic location in Montréal as a “back-up,” but then everything changed quickly. By mid-March, Charleston and Montréal were out and I was social distancing at home with all non-essential businesses closed for the foreseeable future.

I felt all the emotions—shock, disbelief, heartbreak, anger, grief and even guilt. The world seemed to be falling apart by the minute and I was upset over a cancelled bachelorette. I felt guilty that this was upsetting me when people were sick, out of work and literally dying. In the end, I’ve accepted that it’s OK to feel all these feelings and that they are valid. I can both be sad for the loss of my own milestones and be sad for the world.

Now that we are a month into social distancing, we have to start considering postponing our July 18, 2020 wedding at White Point in Nova Scotia. For the first week of quarantine, I couldn’t even bear the thought of this. However, the unknown really perpetuates anxiety and, after a few breakdowns, my partner and I decided to be proactive and look into postponement options. Our vendors have all been amazing and offered to switch to any date they have available in 2020 or 2021 without penalty.

Having a plan and the support of our family and friends has made all the difference. I may end up with a bachelorette after the wedding or a Friday wedding a year later than expected but I know that everything will still be perfect in its own way. I have the most supportive partner I could ask for and this will be a great story for the kids someday.”

—Ellen Purves, pharmacist, Halifax, N.S.

“We’ve had to convert our wedding stationery business to Zoom consultations”  

“The past few weeks have been a real whirlwind. All of a sudden, weddings that had been in the works for months have now been postponed for 2021 and the new clientele we usually expect this time of year has been slow to trickle in. To say it has impacted our business both in the way we function day to day, and the sales we anticipate seasonally, would be an understatement. 

Luckily, with a little bit of additional prep work, we’ve found that video calls have quite successfully replaced our in-person consultations, allowing us to continue to meet with those clients who want to get the ball rolling on their wedding stationery. The silver lining for many clients who want to work on their wedding invitations is that the proofing process for our design work can now be done over email.  

We’ve made efforts to inspire 2021 couples to get started on their stationery now, while everyone is at home on their computers. It’s actually an incredibly productive use of clients’ time—while the world feels like it has stopped—to develop their custom wedding invitation design. By the time updated dates and venues have been confirmed, we can plug any new details into the finished design, and send it to print immediately.

Unlike many other wedding vendors, we’re not necessarily a ‘date-specific’ reservation that needs to be made. We can take on an infinite number of clients on the same wedding date, since invitations are mailed out months in advance, and other ‘day-of’ stationery (such as menus, place cards and seating charts) are picked up by the client or planner the week of the wedding. With so many couples scrambling to renegotiate contracts and rebook vendors for new dates, the little piece of good news is that we’ll be ready and available for any new date that our clients need us for.

Like many other small businesses, we have newly advertised gift cards as a way of “reserving” some design time with us, if it’s not needed immediately. We find it makes for a really beautiful gift for an engaged couple who has had to potentially forfeit deposits with other vendors in order to postpone their wedding date, and supports small business at the same time.

However, gift cards have not taken off nearly as much as our pre-stamped “Colour-in Quarantine” postcards—one theme for kids, another for adults—to both raise funds for regionready.ca, a local hospital foundation, and inspire those staying at home to connect with their loved ones through the mail. As stationers, it’s an opportunity to keep both the art of letter writing, as well as our small business, relevant in these strange times. Truthfully, it’s been incredibly successful, and has opened us up to a new market beyond brides and grooms.

From a financial and logistical standpoint, we’ve chosen to close our brick and mortar shop until clients can access it again in person, but this decision allowed us to maintain our full staff and utilize Zoom for meetings and consultations.

We’ve also tried to promote other areas of our business while weddings are taking a hit. While we identify as a wedding stationery design studio, we are still, in essence, a design firm that can take on all kinds of design work from branding to digital assets. While 2020 weddings are on pause, we’re forced to come up with creative solutions to increase revenue, and keep the studio relevant—truthfully, it’s allowed us to expand the scope of our work and inspire our team to think beyond the status quo of what Paper & Poste has been for so long.”

—Lexi McKenna and Beckee Kavanagh, owners of Paper & Poste, Toronto, Ont.

The month of Ramadan is a time for social connection and celebration. It’s a time for religious reflection and volunteering, a time when we fast from food and water, as well as vices like anger, from sunup to sundown. I’ve celebrated in places as different as California, Jordan, and Washington DC. But no matter where I spend the month, that feeling of community that Ramadan fosters has always found me, and it’s this solidarity that I look forward to most in the days preceding the holiday.

When I celebrated in Jordan, I spent the month bouncing from huge iftar dinners, to dessert places, to hookah lounges, and then out for breakfast, finally falling into bed around 5 a.m. In DC, Palestinian colleagues I had just met invited me to their home and cooked dinners where we discussed Islam in America and the Syrian refugee crisis. The last two Ramadans, I had even started to become a pro at hosting iftar dinners, including my Muslim and non-Muslim friends, and spent time volunteering.

But this year, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, Ramadan will be different. It’s uniquely challenging to practice social distance when congregated for prayer at a mosque. Restaurants remain closed for the safety of staff and patrons. In some states, stay-at-home orders require people to remain isolated in their houses except for essential business. All of the quintessential parts that define the community aspect of Ramadan—large extended prayer services, convivial family gatherings, communal meals—are banned, dangerous, or highly discouraged. Needless to say, Ramadan is going to look vastly different this year.

Abdullah Mohammed lives in the Bay Area of California and frequents the Bay Area Muslim Community Association (MCA) during Ramadan. Though he feels fortunate to have family to celebrate with at home, he said he’ll miss the “sense of community and togetherness” that the month traditionally fosters for him. He often eats suhoor—a morning meal before the sun rises—with friends at IHOP or Denny’s in the morning before beginning their fasts; this year, that won’t be an option.

Because Ramadan is a time of community and inclusivity, many Muslims without a favorite mosque or established community use it as an opportunity to break into new circles. Nadia Khansa, who’s moved around a lot, was hoping to do just that after recently landing in Washington, DC. But now, because of the pandemic, she’s found the month more isolating. “I’m fairly introverted and bad at putting myself out there, but I usually use Ramadan as a safe time where I know mosque doors are extra wide open, to start making those connections with my community and trying different mosques to see which one I fit in with,” she told ELLE.com.

Many mosques and Muslim organizations are finding creative ways to organize events even in quarantine. At Center DC, a faith-based community group serving the DC area, Ramadan is typically about communing over shared meals.

But the center swiftly adapted after the quarantine began, starting with taking all their programming to Zoom early last month. During Ramadan, the center will host digital Iftar Leagues, where people can “break fast in virtual community,” Shreiber said. “We also added a daily morning session for right after fajr so that people can make the most of the time between prayers and going back to sleep in the morning to read Quran and make supplication to God together.” They’ve partnered with Masjid Muhammad in DC to set up a mutual aid effort to match young professionals (Center DC’s main demographic) with their senior members. Though the center is based in DC and will be following prayer times in that region, the virtual programming will be open to everyone.

At the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Richmond, VA, Ramadan is usually programmed with Quran classes before breaking the fast, its young people gathering for a suhoor meal at IHOP, open house community dinners, and an annual fair at the mosque. This year, Vice President Salaam Bhatti said everything is digital, with Quran classes after fajr on Youtube and daytime classes via Zoom. And while the mosque can’t open its doors to the community this year, he said they still hope to foster “greater friendships and understanding,” by staying open for essential services and opening up their doors to food or blood drives if the need arises. “While we must be physically distant,” Bhatti said, “We do not need to be spiritually or emotionally distant from one another.”

Many Muslims are looking for opportunities to contribute to their community without the usual in-person volunteer opportunities provided by many mosques and community centers. Masjid al-Rabia, a radically inclusive mosque in Chicago, is organizing a Radical Muslim Mutual Aid Fund structured around the models set by “the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Fund for LGBTQI+ BIPOC Folks, the Believers Bail Out and the Seattle Artists Relief Fund,” according to their website. Mutual aid is community care through which community members care for one another without a top-down approach. It’s not charity, but rather a mutually beneficial act of solidarity between individuals and their communities. The ethos of mutual aid in the form of wealth redistribution is an integral part of Islam (as zakat), so this is a wonderful way in which Muslims can get involved in supporting their community while continuing to protect themselves and others from COVID-19.

This year, Ramadan is beginning as I myself enter my seventh week of social distancing to flatten the COVID-19 curve. Though I welcome the opportunity for personal growth and pious observation, I feel a profound loss in being without my community this year. Still, I plan to have evenings where I cook the same meal with friends via FaceTime, staying on video to eat together when the sun sets. I’ll join Zoom meetings where speakers talk about the Quran, as I try to finish reading the whole thing day by day. And most importantly, I’ll volunteer my time and money virtually to provide relief for those so deeply affected by the COVID-19 crisis. But it won’t be exactly the same.

I’m a 26-year-old nurse from Indianapolis, Indiana. I’m married with two kids and have two more on the way. My youngest is 11 months old, and my oldest is 3. My twins (a boy and a girl) are due on June 10.

Up until last month, I had my pregnancy plan in place. I’d continue to work my regular 12-hour shifts at the hospital until I physically couldn’t anymore. And when the time came, I’d deliver my twins vaginally, as I have done with my other kids. But on March 22, I tested positive for novel coronavirus. And now everything has changed. I have no clue if my babies will be born healthy, and I’m really scared.

COVID-19 has literally impacted every aspect of my life: the physical, mental, and financial. It’s hit me hard, and I hope that in sharing my story, other people will take the virus more seriously.

This may sound naive, but before I tested positive, I actually wasn’t worried that COVID-19 would get to me.

As a medical-surgical nurse at a large hospital in Indianapolis, I’ve dealt with some seriously ill patients before—and I’ve never gotten sick they way I did from novel coronavirus. In the days before I tested positive, everything was pretty normal. I was working my 12-hour shifts and wasn’t caring for any patients with the virus—at least none that I knew of.

Looking back, there’s definitely a possibility that someone could have been asymptomatic, but since the virus hadn’t really spread much in Indiana yet, I wasn’t really concerned. My hospital didn’t even have much protection or protocol in place for the nurses in terms of handling COVID-19 patients. We had gloves and N95 masks that were being rationed. But at the time, I just don’t think anyone expected novel coronavirus to spread to the degree that it has.

On March 18, I started experiencing chills and body aches during my shift at the hospital.

I felt totally normal in the morning. But by 2 p.m that day, I had a fever of 100 degrees, chills, and body aches. And I was dealing with typical pregnancy symptoms, too: My feet were hurting me, and I couldn’t stand for long periods of time.

At first, I assumed I was coming down with the flu. I wasn’t on my usual floor that day because I’d been floating around to help other floors out (something that happens when we’re short-staffed). I told the manager on that floor how I felt, and she told me to end my shift early. She was worried that I might have COVID-19 and made the call to send me home.

As the day progressed, my symptoms got even worse. I couldn’t stand. I lost my appetite. My sense of taste and smell disappeared. Even then, though, I said to myself, “it’s just the flu.” I didn’t want to believe COVID-19 was a possibility.

I stayed home for two days, and by Friday, March 20, I felt like I was dying. My fever was close to 102, I couldn’t eat anything, and my body aches had gotten worse. On top of that, I had an excruciating headache. I was taking Tylenol, but it only helped so much.

I started to feel a burning sensation in my stomach, too, and I had a lot of reflux. (Because I wasn’t eating or drinking well, I worried I was developing an ulcer from taking medicine on an empty stomach.) At this point, my husband started experiencing shortness of breath and body aches. And my 11-month-old had a fever of 103. My mom had to come over and take care of us all.

Later that day, as my symptoms continued to get worse, I decided it was time to go to the ER. My mom drove me there and walked me inside. There were two people at the front desk checking patients in. When I told them about my symptoms, I was taken into the back immediately while my mom was asked to wait in the car. They weren’t letting anyone sit in the waiting room in an attempt to minimize the possibility of the virus being spread.

Once I was taken into the ER, they took my vitals and said my blood pressure was really high and that I was very dehydrated. They gave me fluids through an IV and a drink with potassium in it to help with both my pressure and dehydration. They also gave me nasal swabs to test me for the flu and COVID-19, which really hurt my throat.

Two hours later, they came back and said that my flu test was negative. The mood in the room shifted dramatically. The doctor told me that he suspected I had COVID-19 and discharged me less than 10 minutes later. The nursing staff hurried to get me out of there; I didn’t even finish the IV fluids they were giving me at the time. Instead, they took out the IV, gave me discharge papers, sent me out through a side door, and told me I should get a call in about 48 hours.

I wasn’t really given any instruction on how to care for myself once I got home because they couldn’t say for sure whether or not I had the virus yet. The only diagnosis listed on my discharge papers was high blood pressure. It was insane.

A nurse from the hospital called me bright and early in the morning. I remember seeing the hospital’s number on my phone and thinking, “Why would they call me this early if they weren’t delivering bad news?” I picked up immediately.

“We’ve got your results,” the nurse said. “You are COVID-19-positive.” She told me that my OB-GYN was notified and that he’d be checking in with me soon.

She also said that if I had any issues breathing that I should come back. But otherwise, since there’s no treatment, I was instructed to just stay home for 14 days and rest. And that was the end of the conversation.

After I got off the phone with the nurse, I started crying because I was like, “Oh my goodness, I have contracted this deadly virus. I’ve probably infected my entire family. What am I supposed to do?” And of course, I was worried about the twins, too. I had no idea how any of this was going to affect them. I immediately felt stressed and anxious.

I had my mother take my kids to her place for two weeks so that my husband and I could recover. Of course, there was a chance that my mother had contracted the virus while taking care of us. But she wasn’t showing any symptoms, and I figured it was better than having her and my children staying with me when I had definitely tested positive.

My ob-gyn called to check on me every two to three days, encouraging me to rest and hydrate. We also scheduled a telemedicine visit for April 10, giving me some time to recover.

I called my manager and updated him on my condition. That’s when I was told that two other hospital staff members had also tested positive for COVID-19. I was taken off the schedule for the next 14 days.

I spent the next two weeks at home in bed, battling novel coronavirus.

I stayed in the house from March 22 until April 6. I did gradually start to feel better, day by day. Eventually, I shook the fever, my chills were gone, and my appetite returned. The only thing that really bothered me as April began was the shortness of breath, which I had been experiencing anyway from being pregnant.

So on April 6 (day 15 of isolation), I tried to go back to work. When I got there, I had to check in with a nurse practitioner who asked me if I was feeling 100 percent. And my answer was no—but I’m pregnant and nothing feels 100 percent when you’re carrying two babies.

I was told that, because I was still having some trouble breathing, I had to leave and receive two negative COVID-19 test results before I could come back to work. The nurse sent me to a testing center that day, and I got my results back on the eighth. I’d tested positive again for COVID-19.

At this point, I was so frustrated since I’d been hoping that I’d be able to go back into work the next week. I talked to my ob-gyn, and we discussed my taking a medical leave of absence. He told me that I needed to stay home to be extra safe because there’s still so much we don’t know about novel coronavirus. I could contract it again, for instance. And I haven’t even tested negative yet.

“You just need to stay home and be safe for you and the babies,” he told me. And I guess that’s what I’m going to do.

Yes, I’m feeling better. But I still can’t say with confidence that the babies and I will make it out of all of this okay.

At this point, I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I have no clue how this virus will affect my twins [Editor’s note: Experts don’t currently believe it’s likely that pregnant women can transmit novel coronavirus to fetuses in utero, per the CDC]. Before I even got sick, the little girl had already been diagnosed with heterotaxy syndrome, meaning her organs have developed on the wrong side of her body. But we won’t know what that means for her until she’s born.

On April 10, I went in to see my fetal maternal medicine doctor and my ob-gyn was in the same building, so we decided to make my telemedicine visit for that day into an in-person visit. I made sure to wear a mask, and the staff deliberately avoided booking any other appointments for the hour before or after mine. You could tell they were really fearful about my being there and that they didn’t want to get too close. But I was just happy they let me come in at all. I was in desperate need of some reassurance.

During my visit, I got an ultrasound and was told that the babies looked healthy. Their heartbeats were great, and they were growing. But I still have three months left. Ultimately, my doctors said that we won’t really know what’s happening to them health-wise until they’re born. And that’s incredibly scary.

My stress levels are through the roof. We’re hoping that my being put on medical leave will help me relax. But I’m not getting paid right now, and I can’t help but think about how I’m not providing for my family.

On top of everything else, my birth plan has completely shifted.

My ob-gyn wants me to deliver mid-May via C-section because I’m at a higher risk of going into preterm labor since I just had my daughter last May. But I know nothing about C-sections since I gave birth to my other two babies vaginally—except that the recovery time for a C-section is longer. Since I will have to get back to work and care for four small children, that just isn’t ideal.

At this point, I’m praying for a miracle. I’m just hoping this all turns around. This is a life-changing time for me, being pregnant with twins, and I feel like I can’t celebrate it because of everything else that’s happened. But I hope that, by sharing my story, I’ll encourage people to start taking the virus more seriously.

Healthcare workers are putting ourselves at risk for the public—so the least you can do for them is take measures like staying home and social distancing to try to slow the spread of the virus. Please—my babies and I, along with my fellow healthcare workers, are depending on you.

We did it. We have officially reached who-the-hell-knows week of quarantine. Our roots have grown out, our makeup has been abandoned, and real pants are a distant memory. Probably the only quarantine glow-up to exist has happened to Zoom. The once-irrelevant video call service has become all the rage for working professionals, educators, and families during the COVID-19 outbreak.

For many, Zoom is a platform we’re still getting used to. We’ve entered a new reality where joining with audio or joining with video is crucial decision. A world where questions like, “Can you hear me?” and “Can you see me?” are asked so often they’re starting to seem existential.

Quarantined at my parent’s house, I joined a video conference call only to frantically shut my laptop after my mom entered our living room and started singing to our dog. But I quickly learned I was not alone in my Zoom fail.

“I had planned a happy hour with my college besties and made my Zoom name ‘Lexi Raw Dog Rogers,’ a funny inside joke from college,” *Lexi Rogers told ELLE.com. “Fast forward to the next night, to a more low-key family Zoom birthday party. I log on to join the fam and my name ‘Lexi Raw Dog Rodgers’ shows up. My sister immediately calls me out, which lead to my dad calling me ‘Raw Dog’ for the entire Zoom, having noooo idea what it means. Truly a Zoom fail, but also added some great quarantine content and laughs to my life.”

Ahead, the best and most cringe-worthy Zoom fails you’ll never want commit.

*Name has been changed.

I fell in love with my roommate. We got engaged in the house and, funnily enough, we got married in the house as well. The wedding day brought the typical long-term coordination and planning that goes into an event of this scale, and all our family and friends temporarily moved into our neighborhood for the festivities. Because of an unexpected change in plans, everyone had to get to know each other fast—it took two days to get my childhood best friend to get along with my work best friend. My fiancé’s brothers wouldn’t stop swimming, and I upset my future in-laws when I didn’t open the door quickly enough. (In my defense, my energy was low and I had to pee.) But the day finally came, and it was perfect. I saved everything, booted down, and closed my laptop.

My real-life wedding was an entirely different story. I got engaged in September of 2018 and spent the last few years dreaming and planning about May 30, 2020—only for everything to get swept away in the coronavirus pandemic. So I decided to recreate the day the best way I could: in the alternate reality of The Sims.

My disappointment comes with all the necessary caveats; ultimately, a canceled wedding is low on the list of real-world concerns, and I am so lucky and thankful to have safety and health. Still, I’m disappointed, and that feeling took me by surprise at first. Though I wasn’t a bridezilla, or someone who popped open the wedding scrapbook they’d been compiling since elementary school, I’d reached the point in planning when I wondered what it was all for. The event became associated with a blur of DJ and lighting contracts, selections of identical-looking cutlery, and questions from relatives. In a way, The Sims redirected my focus to what’s really important.

I found comfort in creating all the important people in my life. I built my man of honor, Eric, in the image of our first meeting: an over-tanned, lanyard-toting, Aeropostale double collar-wearing king. He has since transformed into a New York City tech moneymaker, but remembering how I met him made his presence in my wedding party—real or virtual—that much more significant. As I meticulously crafted my stage mom in the Create A Sim portal, I could almost hear her voice guiding my hand over the mouse: “Valerie Bertinelli when she was younger. Maybe a little bit more Carmen Electra.”

But I found the most joy in creating my future husband. How could I capture eight years, three cities, and a ten-year friendship in a game where the characters talk in a nightmare babble? It was easier than you’d think. I gave him all the characteristics he already possessed: a brave and kind personality, hair that is both floppy and luscious, and a mutual love that takes no work. We instantly connected, and were married within a Sims month.

The last time I played The Sims I was in middle school. I used the game as an escape, to craft the older, cooler, WooHoo-having version of the life I envisioned for myself. In my young mind, wealth, success, and happiness meant a pool in the backyard and a second refrigerator just for drinks. Decorations for every holiday sat alongside framed family portraits over the fireplace.

Now, at 28, I built a second dream world filled with people over things. Since our wedding, I’ve given birth to four kids (two boys and a set of twin girls). My husband published five books, and I have a personal net worth of $4 million. We see our family and friends most days for BBQs and park dates. I can watch guests take a drink from the second refrigerator as I swim in the pool with my husband. While my real life is on pause, The Sims gives me the chance to live it out anyway.

If you ask newlyweds Abena and Ade to pick a song to represent their journey so far, they’ll say “The Matrimony” by Wale and Usher without hesitation. It’s the Jerry Seinfeld monologue that opens the song that resonates with the couple the most: “Getting engaged is the first hill of the roller coaster,” the veteran comedian explains.

Two years ago, on April 3, 2018, Ade devised a genius plan. Instead of taking Abena, his girlfriend of 10 years to New York’s quintessential proposal spots—Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Conservatory Garden, etc.—he set up a surprise photoshoot-turned-proposal at a NYC hotel. After a few shots, Ade dropped to one knee and asked for Abena’s hand in marriage. A smile, a “yes,” and a kiss followed, along with two years of wedding planning. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the couple’s rollercoaster took a deep plunge.

The bad news came in waves. The venue Abena and Ade secured for their ceremony informed the couple that they’d be shutting down indefinitely; Abena’s final dress fitting was canceled, as well as her bridesmaids’ gown fittings and Ade’s final suit fitting, after a mandate forced all non-essential businesses to shut down. What’s more, the couple only had a short window of time to pick up their rings before the jewelry boutique closed up shop. But even as the virus overwhelmed hospitals and shut down schools and completely upended every aspect of the wedding, Abena, a nurse practitioner, and Ade, a special needs educator, knew the impending turmoil wasn’t enough to deter them from getting married on their original date, April 4, the day after their 12-year anniversary.

“There’s so much that goes into planning a wedding that people kind of forget what it actually is to be in a marriage,” Abena tells ELLE.com of their decision to follow through with their ceremony. Their Plan B? Asking family and friends to dial into the app du jour, Zoom, a video conferencing service that has become the go-to platform for virtual meetings, happy hours, and now, weddings.

“For us, it was the opportunity to finish what we started. We started this journey being engaged for several years, and even though things were changing, we didn’t want to use that as an excuse to not hold true to our hearts and do the only thing we wanted, which was to get married on the day we initially chose,” Ade adds.

Abena sat in her funk, though, as she watched the wedding she planned for the past two years crumble before her eyes, while also dealing with the very real consequences of the pandemic at work, like the NYC Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) shortage. Then Sandy, one of Abena’s bridesmaids and the “event planner” of the crew, brought up the idea of hosting Zoom wedding and gathered the entire bridal to bring the idea to fruition. What followed were dozens of Amazon Prime orders, a last-minute wedding dress purchase, and a DIY photo studio set-up, all culminating in a special, 50-person Zoom wedding put together in one week.

“Everything that’s going on in the world shines the light on how precious life is at this moment,” Abena continues. “This was an opportunity for all of us to get grounded in who we are. As far as the relationship between me and Ade goes, we’re grounded in our love and that’s all we needed. It felt right.”

Ahead, Abena, Ade, and the bridal party share their tips for pulling off a Zoom wedding in such a short time.

Set up a Zoom account.

When Abena and Ade began calling their family and friends to deliver the news that their original wedding would no longer happen, they were met with support and love, which made the idea of a Zoom wedding seem not too far-fetched. Sandy, well-versed in all things social media, set up a Zoom Pro account that allows for up 100 participants and a 24 hour time limit (the free Zoom account allows up to 100 participants, but caps the “meeting” at 40 minutes). After working with Ade’s best man to compile a list of guests, the Zoom link was sent out.

Buy an alternative affordable wedding dress.

Pressed for time, Abena turned to Pretty Little Thing to find a last-minute wedding dress. “The dress came and I had to do so many alterations—tailoring it to my size, creating a split, etc.—to make it look how I wanted.” Ade, on the other hand, dipped into his closet and found a black suit.

Amazon Prime will be your best friend.

With only a week to plan the wedding, the bridesmaids turned to Amazon to purchase all the wedding decorations. “The bride’s only demand was a balloon arch, which ended up being genius and a beautiful piece to exchange their vows under,” Afua, the bride’s sister and maid of honor, explains. To give the living room a more romantic feel, Afua ordered string lights and artificial hanging leaf garland to suspend from the ceilings, and 48 white unscented candles peppered throughout the room.

Create a playlist.

Abena and Ade’s original DJ attended the Zoom wedding (with a sunny vineyard as his Zoom background) but the couple had a few must-have songs they wanted to play throughout the ceremony. While getting ready, KC & JoJo’s classic wedding tune, “All My Life” played in the background. Then, the couple walked down the aisle to Wale’s “The Matrimony”—Abena and Ade’s “our song“—and had their first dance to Beyonce’s “1+1,” of course.

Find a last-minute bakery for the wedding cake (or bake it yourself).

“My bridesmaid, Nana, miraculously found Mia’s Bakery in Brooklyn and was able to get a cake,” Abena adds. Nana ordered a cake with plain white icing and decorated it herself by ordering fresh white roses and hydrangeas from a local floral shop. “I think we knew we did good when the we saw the groom’s face as he entered the room because he knew he was getting married that day but he didn’t know what that would look like,” Afua says.

Secure as many tripods needed to take the best photos.

“We had three tripods set up in every corner of the room,” Abena jokes. One tripod held the couple’s Canon camera, and the other two held iPhones. The couple’s parents were also in the room—don’t worry, no more than 10 people attended in-person—and captured the moment on their own devices as well.

Turn to YouTube for quick hair and makeup tutorials.

Abena relied on her own skills and YouTube videos to create her wedding day hair and makeup. She opted for a sleek middle part that fell into loose waves along with neutral makeup.

Get married!

“You really have to have an open heart and mind to be able to go through something this tough. But at the end of it if all if all you want is to be married, then where, how or when you do it isn’t going to make a difference,” Abena explains. Ade adds that marriage is about love—”real, deep, passionate love and no matter what is thrown at you, like a pandemic, that’s what will still be there in the end.”

Abena ends with final words for couples who find themselves in the same situation: “Do what you feel in your heart is right. Sometimes people get consumed by the idea of what a wedding should be, especially in the age of social media where Instagram tells you a wedding is supposed to be all grand, but when all you truly want is a happy marriage, none of that will matter.”