Chronicling Life’s Milestones during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Autoethnography as a Starting Point

For our 2024-2025 humanities research project for The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP, we drew on multiple sources of data to analyze how people in the US Southwest chronicled major life cycle events during the COVID-19 pandemic. Primarily, we will be analyzing journal entries collected as a part of the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP, 2024). The Pandemic Journaling Project was initiated in May 2020 by Sarah Willen and Katherine Mason as a joint initiative between the University of Connecticut and Brown University. One objective of the project was to offer people from around the world a mechanism for documenting their pandemic experiences to create a living archive. The project collected over 27,000 journal entries from over 1,800 people in 55 countries. We are currently identifying entries written by individuals residing in the US Southwest, defined as the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma. Among entries originating from this region, we will be honing in on those that reference major life milestones and lifecycle events, such as births, graduations, weddings, and funerals. To attend to dynamics specific to the El Paso, Texas-Juárez, Mexico border region, we complemented the journal data with local newspaper and social media accounts of how people in the region experienced major life cycle events.

Before engaging with how others chronicled life’s milestones during the pandemic, we decided to start by reflecting on how we documented our own experiences, as we all underwent major life transitions early in the pandemic. Carina Heckert (Faculty Fellow) gave birth to her first child in May 2020. Brisa Medina and Noelle Alarcon (Undergraduate Research Fellows) were finishing high school during the initial pandemic lockdown and missed the in-person celebrations related to prom, graduation, and beginning college. All of us kept records of our pandemic experiences, although our documentary methods took different forms. In connecting our own experiences to the broader social, political, and historical landscape of the pandemic, we are engaging in what anthropologists call autoethnography. This exercise in autoethnography will ultimately help us better understand how our own subjective experiences influence our analysis of the archival data from the Pandemic Journaling Project and local news and social media sources.

Carina Heckert (Faculty Fellow)

On May 7, 2020, I gave birth to my son, Gabriel, whom we affectionately call Gabito. Although we had hired a doula (a birth support person) prior to entering pandemic lockdown, new hospital protocol meant that doulas were not permitted to attend births. My doula did, however, later bring us a copy of The El Paso Times from that date. The headlines include “Next reopening phase set for Friday” and “‘Back to Work’ task force says Texas can soon reopen 100%.” There was such optimism (to put it kindly) in the headlines.

Front page of The El Paso Times on May 7, 2020

Over four years later, in the midst of a heat wave in June 2024, The El Paso Times reported that the earliest 100 degree date had occurred the day Gabito was born. On May 7, 2020, I knew nothing of the record-breaking heat, given that I was unable to leave my hospital room. For a brief moment, I even forgot that we were in the midst of a pandemic. I was so sleep deprived that my anxiety over the possibility of my newborn contracting COVID waned, even as numerous hospital personnel circulated in and out of the room. I do, however, remember minute details of the final days of my pregnancy and my birth experience, which I later recorded in my son’s baby book.

My own mother sent me an empty baby book during my final weeks of pregnancy. There is a surprising degree of variety in baby books, given that they are composed mostly of empty pages waiting to be filled. The book that my mother used to meticulously record the details of my first year of life is primarily fact driven, with space to record my height and weight each month, a place to list baby shower gifts, and pages to document milestones such as “baby’s first food.” The book that my mother sent me to use for my son has space for such details, but also elicits a diary of sorts. I remember very clearly some of what I wrote – I can describe the birth story in vivid detail without referring to the three-page entry I wrote in the baby book. I do not need the written account to remember that at 37 weeks and 6 days pregnant I was not feeling right, and when I took my blood pressure, it was 169/97. I remember the pit I felt in my stomach when I realized that I was likely developing preeclampsia. I had already been studying maternal health for too long and knew how things would likely progress. The home birth that I had planned was no longer going to happen, despite how much I wanted to avoid being anywhere near a hospital during a still very new pandemic.

Carina’s baby book

There are other details accounted for in the baby book that I completely forgot about. Looking back, the book is not just about Gabito’s first year of life or my first year as a mother. It is also a testament of life during the first year of the pandemic. In the space to record average prices on Gabito’s day of birth, I recorded the price of gas at $1.00/gallon. Remember how there was a surplus of oil because people were staying home, and gas prices plunged? I totally forgot about that. The pages dedicated the baby shower ask: “How many people rubbed mom’s belly?” and “What did we do at the shower?” I was unable to respond to those questions, but instead described the “drive by” baby shower that friends and co-workers organized after our other baby shower had been cancelled. Such “drive by” celebrations went on to become the norm over the next year.

The baby book had space to record thoughts and new developments every month during the first year of Gabito’s life. There are moments when loneliness and sadness over missed experiences crept into what I recorded. At seven months old, which was December 2020 and when El Paso was a COVID hotspot and public health disaster, I wrote, “I really wish we could start introducing you to new people so that you can make friends and have more socialization, but we are staying isolated.” Gabito had yet to even enter a grocery store. Two months later, I lamented, “You really love the water. I wish I could take you swimming.” Even as the vaccine became available, we remained apprehensive as parents. In May 2021, I wrote, “We still don’t take you too many places yet since there isn’t a vaccine for babies. I can’t wait to take you to the grocery store, library, and pool so that you can start to see more of the world.” Eventually, we slowly started returning to normal, with mixed emotions. When I had to return to working in person in August 2021, Gabito started daycare. He soon contracted COVID for the first time, which we expected, but still hoped would not happen.

Every year since Gabito was born, I have recorded a long birthday message for him in his baby book. “We will always be grateful for the extra time that we had with you because of the pandemic,” starts his message on May 7, 2021. Over one year into the pandemic there had been so much pain, death, and desperation around us. It is difficult to think back to our individual and collective experiences during that time. Despite the traumas, it was also a time when we felt gratefulness and love. We were lucky we had the resources to stay isolated and healthy. We were also lucky to have family that supported us, even though we live far from all our immediate family members. When my son was two weeks old, my parents drove across the country for 24 hours without stopping. They even used the bathroom on the side of the road to avoid COVID exposure. My father wrote to Gabito in the baby book, “It was worth the long drive to be able to see you.” When Gabito was four months old, my mother-in-law travelled from Bolivia to stay with us for six months to help with childcare since we had to return to work. To get from Bolivia to Miami, she had to take a chartered flight reserved only for US citizens and permanent residents. Her presence made the rest of that first year feel less lonely. In the “Baby’s First ____” section of the baby book, the first Thanksgiving, Christmas, winter, Valentine’s Day, and spring were all with just the four of us.

Even though Gabito is now four years old, I write occasional messages in his baby book. COVID still creeps into some of these messages. Under the “Baby’s First Fourth of July” page, I attached a picture from 2022, with the note, “This was from the 4th of July after you turned two – the first one we could actually celebrate because of COVID…and we all got COVID the next week.”

Brisa Medina (Undergraduate Research Fellow)

If you had told me that the pandemic was in full force, I would not have known. All I knew was that my group from English class had the sickest group project idea, and we were going to make our teacher proud. Our theme: Zombie apocalypse caused by a parasitic infection. We were sitting around my living room as we worked, reading a message from our teacher that the world had to be put on pause for at most two weeks. Just two weeks. After that, we would be back in school and could still have our senior sunset, prom, and graduation. In hindsight, that was our naivety talking. It seems like a blur. I was in our group chat, excitedly typing out my twisted ideas for fake organs as props while people were getting sick with the virus in mass. If you were to ask me how many cases were in the state of Texas or what new regulations were released to the public, I would not have known the answer. 

I am ashamed to admit I was not scared that the world had stopped because of this violent virus. Instead, I was furious. The days kept going and all my senior projects were put on hold. No more senior activities and no more rites of passages that every kid anticipates. Instead of reading the news of the overwhelming number of new COVID cases and overworked hospital staff, I was checking my school email for updates. I spent those early months gripped by anger while the world was gripped by fear.

My aunt knew that I had been an angsty teen, multiplied by 10. She convinced my mother that what I needed was a journal. At first, I wrote in large print, my mind jumping from one topic to the next. I barely filled out a page before I had given up. At the time, I did not think it was necessary to even include the dates on my entries. Sometime later, my favorite teacher who I had admired the most wrote us a goodbye letter. It was an encouraging letter that I revisit often. But that moment hit me so incredibly hard. It was not supposed to be a letter delivered through an email. I was supposed to say goodbye to my teachers, to friends leaving to continue their lives elsewhere. I can tell you how much I cried and what songs I listened to soothe myself. But what happened that day in the news, I have no clue.

At some point, the large lettering that characterized my early journal entries turned into carefully written words. Eventually dates appeared on my pages. I started writing full thought-out responses. I started listing the emotions that had come along the way. In a dramatic sense, I started to mourn the life I had imagined I was going to live. Also during this time, my mother was diagnosed with early onset dementia. Following this news, my father had asked me to reconsider my dream school, instead living at home and commuting to The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), so that I could spend as much time with my mother as possible. So, there went my dream university, senior year, and the possibility of my freshman year away from home. I had also started my first relationship ever, and we could not move it past the screen for nearly a year because the world was facing bigger problems than either of us. And above all things, I worried about my mother daily.  While I was a freshman at UTEP, I had written, “Oh, my brother and I had a very deep conversation about mom. She’s getting worse and I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I always wondered if she is going to forget about me? I don’t want to lose her, but it’s happening right in front of my eyes.” I was forced to stay home, and I watched my mother slowly get worse.

Brisa’s pandemic journals and artwork

The days went on and my mother’s memory continued to get foggier and foggier. The spring semester of my freshman year, just a couple of days after my birthday, we were told my mother had a large mass inside her brain. It was a diagnosis that was treatable. But for the next year, it was in and out of hospitals, clinics, and rehab centers. It became a cycle. Her mind had been profoundly affected by the mass. After an initial surgery, the mass grew back. There would be one more round of surgery and half a year of chemo and radiation therapy. Although new clinical protocols stated that only the patient was allowed in exam rooms, we were an exception because my mother could no longer advocate and act as an independent person. I continued to not pay attention to the headlines, and I almost felt selfish. How could I be thinking of myself, my mother, my brother, and my father when so many people were struggling for their lives? How could I be like that? A year into the pandemic, on March 9, 2021, my opening sentence was, “Hello book of sorrows.” Following that entry, I did not write in my journal again until June 11, 2021. I began, “The month of May has been a blur. My mother had her surgery and it’s been a constant struggle since.” I reread my passages, and I do not mention the COVID case numbers. I do not mention the lives lost. I do not mention the bigger picture. I feel so incredibly guilty.

I understand now that I lacked the emotional awareness to make sense of the world, but so did everybody else. I was a kid trying to make sense of why the world stopped spinning and why all the worst things that could ever happen, happened. I took up painting, reading, and writing. Anything to get the itching out of my fingers. I never felt this level of anxiety before. I had not known it then, but I was not alone. I felt like the last person on earth when I really was not. Many others were struggling with the same trembling feeling. I had cooped up insanity whirling inside my brain that begged to be pulled and prodded. We were all waiting for the world to get back to normal. We were all waiting for it. And now, there has been such a shift. We have all gotten back to a semblance of normality and the pandemic feels like a fever dream. I look back and laugh at myself and I wish I could just climb through the pages of my journal and shake myself. I would assure myself that everything would work itself out. I look back at the goodbye letter from my teacher and I laugh. He wrote, “You’re about to enter an uncertain world where no one seems to know what they are doing. Basically, it’s the one that has always existed…only with COVID now. So hey, it’s not that bad!”

Noelle Alarcon (Undergraduate Research Fellow)

It was cloudy by the end of the school day. This was the Friday before Spring Break of my junior year of high school. Even now, as a senior in college, I can recall that day so vividly because it marked one of the last days of pre-pandemic life. It was also an eventful day in general. A loose dog on my street came up to me, and despite having other dogs at home and no idea how to get this dog back to his family, I let him follow me into my garage. My parents, also avid animal lovers, immediately took up the search for his owners and gave him food and water. The owner, a young military wife, eventually contacted my mom through a Facebook post she had made a couple of hours later. My mom and I stood in our driveway as the lady explained how much this dog meant to her and her husband, who was deployed. Talking face-to-face with a stranger, standing less than six feet apart, maskless. We did not know how different the world would be and how soon everything would change. I look back on that moment and feel a wash of sadness. While looking through some old journals of mine from that time, I realized how much the coming loneliness of the pandemic and lockdown affected me in the long run. I did not realize how severely desperate I had become for human interaction during the initial stages of lockdown.

Over the next week, I would have Winter Guard practice. These practices were long and serious, in preparation for our out-of-town regionals performance that was coming up that weekend. The last practice before the official shutdown of my world, my teammates and I were sent home early for playing around and our coach was mad at us. I remember him saying he would “talk to us about packing lists for this weekend at tomorrow's practice.” That night, we got the news our regional, and several other national events, were cancelled for the season. I did not want to believe it at first.

I called everybody I could think of. In tears, I called the teammate who was like a sister to me. Our mothers had been talking back and forth all day knowing this could happen. They were the first ones to break the news from the official website. I called a boy on drum line I had a crush on at the time. It was silly and he liked one of my other teammates, but I persisted and wanted to hear some comforting words from someone not on my team. He did not really care too much. I still sobbed in my room alone. I look back at text messages exchanged in the team group chat from the next day. Questions swirled that mirrored greater anxieties:

What do we do now?

Are the local competitions still going on?

Are you guys ok?

Has the school said anything?

We had one more local competition, in which we got first place, before the rest were also cancelled. It was the last complete show I would ever perform, and I miss performing to this day. My teammates remained close. Despite the transition to online school and the loss of our season, we had group FaceTime sessions and regular check-ins to keep us together.

While searching in many of my old journals from that time, I discovered my past self had ripped out way too many pages for my liking. I do not know what secrets past me was trying to keep from the future, but the pages I still have reveal much about my attitudes toward the world. The rest of the semester I became less and less involved in my schoolwork. I developed an over reliance on video games and YouTube to keep me distracted. I started a dream journal that mostly chronicled anxiety and loneliness seeping into my unconscious mind. I sat on my couch or my bed without moving for hours a day.

Back then, I was grateful for a break. I felt burnt out and saw the pandemic as a way to recover. That was one highlight of isolation -- resting. I was anxious about school and the political climate of the country at the time, but I was stuck at home and that helped. Over the next year and half leading up to my high school graduation, I had a series of socially-distanced events celebrating my senior year, more cancellations of marching band performances and football games before the season even really started, and more online school. In the moment, I only really cared about performing and my team. On the inside, I thought I felt relief, but over time, I realize it was a depressive state I had been experiencing.

As I self-reflect now, three years later, I am proud of myself for pushing through and recognizing the mental health toll and recovery journey I have undergone. I realize that the pandemic has affected all of us differently. Reading journal entries from other people has also revealed a solidarity in me with these strangers. It serves as a reminder that the world is still healing and grieving loss in any capacity is a process.

Carina Heckert, Faculty Fellow; and Brisa Medina, and Noelle Alarcon, Undergraduate Research Fellows 2024-2025

The University of Texas at El Paso, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP

References

The Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP). (2024) University of Connecticut and Brown University. https://pandemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu/. Accessed September 18, 2024.