Story Teller: Daniel Leon
Michelle is 22 years old and currently lives in Saginaw, Michigan where she is a stay at home mom and a student at Delta College. Michelle mentions first hearing about Covid from the social media app TikTok, which made jokes about the spread of Covid throughout the United States. Once it became a prominent problem, her mom came home from the hospital where she works and had told her about their meeting for Covid-19 where, at the time they estimated more than 50,000 people to die from the virus. Three weeks before the pandemic, Michelle gave birth to a baby and was afraid of taking her places, she even excluded herself from friends and family in order to protect herself and the child while not even being able to be around her mother as she worked in the Emergency Room handling Covid patients. In the last 6 months of 2020, she felt very lonely, even imprisoned in her own home and was scared to ask for help with an active child while feeling like she missed out on building relationships, being around family and seeing the world. Despite the isolation and dealing with other problems from Covid, she found the positive and says she is grateful for being able to watch her child grow and be with her every day while attending school.
Michelle now takes better care of her hygiene and reflects on the pre-pandemic and how she would touch everything and not think twice about the germs. She finds it funny however, when trying to smile at strangers with a mask on and they just squint at each other since you are unable to see their facial expressions. Michelle’s greatest take away and overall life lesson she took from Covid was to love family while they’re here, and as humans we aren’t promised another day and that we need to trust science in moments like this to get us through the pandemic.
MIPandemicStory 