Anne Helen Petersen’s latest words resonated with me:

I am not a parent. I am, however, a person who hears and sympathizes with so many of the struggles of managing to work and parent right now, and as Chloe Cooney put it all the way back in April, “the parents are not okay.” Not the parents who are essential workers. Not the parents who are taking care of infants, or toddlers, or elementary school age kids who desperately miss their friends, or even teens. Not the parents who are trying to figure out what to do about school. Not the parents who are trying to figure out if it’s okay to use their own parents as caregivers. None of the parents are okay.

The pandemic has been hard on everyone, in almost every way imaginable, and often in the most tragic manner. But the impossible triad of adulthood, parenting and work is the one that’s really had me under its thumb.