Other Parent: How are you guys doing?

Me (thinking): Well, we haven't left the house in soon-to-be three-weeks. I’m pretty sure my eyebrows are starting to resemble The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and my hair has grease in it more days than not. My husband’s still going into work so I worry about him. My kids have regressed in their behavior so-much-so that I question my parenting constantly. My strong-willed oldest, in particular, has been testy, and I feel like I’m always yelling at her. My two-year-old has so much separation anxiety that I can’t even leave the room to put the baby down for a nap without her crying. Then, I have to figure out things for us to do all day. I have to plan an activity, so my kids can spend five-minutes on it or decide they want to do something else from the get-go. Then, we try a Livestream music class that nobody’s interested in besides the baby. My oldest, to entertain herself, puts on an Elsa dress, and my two-year-old wants the same outfit and throws an epic tantrum, while I’m offering her every other dress-up outfit alternative. She screams so much that we can’t hear the music, so that fails too. And that's just 45 minutes of our day. We haven’t been outside in three days because it’s been raining. We miss the fresh air. Oh, and then at night after I do some work, I have to prepare things to do for tomorrow on top of the usual mental load of motherhood. Some days it gets overwhelming, and I can feel my depression creeping up. Other days I'm okay. When I hit the bed, I stay up for hours because my anxiety has been bad between Covid news and the overwhelm. I stay up past 1 am, overthinking everything. Then the baby and two-year-old switch off crying every couple of hours until we start the day early the next morning…

Me (says): I’m doing okay, at least we’re all healthy.

Other Parent (says): Same *but her day was similar to mine

*Moms right now aren’t in a good mental health space, and there is a significant discrepancy between what we’re saying and how we feel. We may not have Covid, but our mental health is struggling between loneliness, anxiety, and all that we have on our plates. This is hard. Reach out to her.

This post originally appeared on the author's Facebook. Her book Living FULL: Winning My Battle with Eating Disorder is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2O4mJId