Editor’s Letter

The Power of Human Connection

COVID changes everything, every single facet of our lives. We say this so often that the message has a numbing effect.

In the spring and summer of 2020, the idea of a “new normal” grabbed everyone’s imagination. It helped us explain how fundamentally life was changing. But the profound truth didn’t really settle in until that “new normal” no longer felt new at all. We now realize: This is normal.

Our shared pandemic experience includes grief resulting from specific, major loss – a family member, a home, a livelihood, hope. It includes sadness sparked by the constantly shifting sands of living in pandemic times. This much we know: We must support one another in attending to our mental, as well as physical, health needs.

Nowhere is this truer than inside our hospitals. Health care workers live life immersed in the flux, fear, and uncertainty of the virus. Like each of us, they see the disease’s profound impact on their own personal lives, even while they actively care for those whose lives COVID is destroying.

Our health care workers have been called upon to walk directly into COVID’s unknown, constantly adapting to and incorporating new care treatments as they emerge. Those who work at the bedside courageously guide patients and their families through that unknown. They shoulder the solemn weight of their role with all the dignity and respect one can muster. It takes a toll that’s impossible to convey if one has not lived it.

I have not lived it.

I, like many, have worked from home during the pandemic. Like many (including our health care workers), I have experienced: virtual school, ordering groceries online, ordering everything online, wearing masks, missing grandparents, pandemic pregnancy, getting vaccinated, glimmers of relief, long-awaited reunions with loved ones, pangs of panic over the Delta variant, a return to in-person school – life changed by COVID.

Our children suffer pandemic change uniquely. It upends their entire context for understanding how the world works – their social interactions, their routines, the way they learn and communicate. As for so many adults, it affects their mental health.

This issue of the magazine explores the mental health challenges we face as a society during the time of COVID, from loneliness and isolation to the necessity of self-care.

We look at how COVID unsparingly disrupts our lives mentally, emotionally, and physically. For some, the physical impact goes far beyond COVID’s cycle – contracting the virus, quarantining, seeking treatment, returning to health. As more cases of what’s now called “Long COVID” emerge, we’re learning how much we do not know about the virus.

Just as health care workers at the bedside are facing the unknown, so are these “long-haulers.” You’ll find articles sharing personal accounts of life with this new disease, offering ideas about how and where to seek help. We include physicians’ descriptions of syndromes to watch for when assessing Long COVID patients.

It’s true that few things remain entirely untouched by the COVID-19 pandemic. As we share stories of what people face right now, in the eye of the storm, we issue this call to you: Ask for help when you need it. Support one another. Accept support when it’s offered.

When the daily reality of COVID no longer holds us at this fever pitch of fear, devastation, and uncertainty, we will reflect upon what brought us through the darkest times. I trust that it will be the one thing that COVID simply cannot change: the power of human connection to heal us.

Ashley Warren

Editor in Chief