What has been a happy moment for you during Covid-19?

Janis shares about being diagnosed with situational depression relating to Covid-19 stressors being a single mom and running a business.

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“I’m a business owner and also a mother, so when the shelter-in-place orders came from our local public health authority there was a lot of immediate changes in my life within a 24 to 48 hour period. I no longer had a physical work space and I one on one with people in that commercial space. I also no longer had a child who went to school. So, not only was I bringing my workplace home, but the way that I delivered my service completely changed. I immediately went into high-gear where I would work 12, 14, 16, sometimes 18 hours a day because I was trying to figure out how to pivot my business and make everything smooth for clients and get the entire backend of my business setup for digital business. There was a lot of experimentation and just a lot of uncertainty, unknowns, revenue changes. Then, I also had to deal with changes in my home life because my son was then home all the time and without a physical space for him to go to, that became my responsibility. I did not do a good job of any of this particularly. When I look back on it, I would describe that I was like a duck on top of the water for probably six weeks, where it looked like I was floating peacefully on top of the water. Meanwhile, my legs were paddling underneath. Then, there was a two to four week period where I think the duck just, to everybody’s eyes, just sunk under the water…and I burned out. I was diagnosed as having situational depression and at that moment, I really paused because I’ve never had a diagnosis of depression. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never been depressed before…”