Hello, my name is Gisele C., I am 44 years old. I am a graduate student in Pedagogy and I work in Early Childhood Education.

At the beginning of the pandemic, in early March 2020, I was not very aware of the coronavirus until then
there was no care in public transport, the workplace, etc. At the end of March, I came to understand that the coronavirus was a danger, how much we neglected the danger that was around us.

In April, precisely on April 14th, I and my co-workers lost our jobs, which made me relieved because everyone involved (professionals, students, and family) would not be exposed to a new virus. On April 22, my husband presented the first symptoms of COVID-19, he had to leave work for a week then he got worse, having to change all the medications and take a rest. He suffered but didn’t need to be hospitalized.

After this phase of immense sadness, my daughters and I tried to occupy ourselves with what was possible. First, we painted our entire apartment, we changed the decoration a little. We are interested in the plants from which we acquire new species, some died, others developed beautifully, these measures helped us to feel alive. Another discovery was cooking, my daughters learned to make sweets, cakes, pasta, among other delicious things.

The positive side of social isolation was that it provided us ways to seek to live together in the best
as possible, without much pressure and with a lot of respect for the feelings of each one. We studied a lot, cooked a lot, had time to read, watch a thousand series, movies, watch the lives of beloved artists.

On the negative side, it was seeing my husband’s work invade our house in that sense he worked a lot more, we needed to be silent, keep up with the stress of everyday life. That wasn’t cool and as soon as possible, he went back to work in person.

Remote teaching also stressed us a lot. In my view, making social isolation was and is being difficult, but we did our part and we tried to overcome it in the best possible way but when you have a genocidal and denialist president, everything becomes more difficult to bear. Our mismanagement simply trivialized death. Today Brazil is close to 300 thousand dead, 300 thousand lives and we are already in the third Minister of Health.

This atypical moment that we are living in will leave marks deep in each of us. The pandemic taught us about solidarity with COVID-19 victims and the unemployed. That moment affects us emotionally, psychologically, and financially.