How my layoff during the pandemic was a blessing in disguise - Business Insider

Megan Feldman Bettencourt

It was late March. My husband, an equities trader, had been deemed an essential worker in finance, which left me to work at home alone with our son and 1-year-old daughter. After failing to get much done for my marketing job while my daughter crawled around opening cabinets and my son demanded I color with him, I'd been writing and editing copy mostly at night, falling asleep at my computer.

I'd learned to manage them using a toolkit of counseling, exercise, meditation, and cognitive behavioral ways of separating myself from anxious or hopeless thoughts. Becoming a parent made it challenging to keep up these habits, but now, in the midst of the pandemic, it seemed impossible. I managed to calm his fears, and soon we were building a fort with pillows while his sister continued to nap upstairs. But with each pillow I helped him place, the panic in my chest blossomed.The word "never" should have tipped me off to the presence of my least favorite alter-ego: Hopeless Bag Lady.

Yet during the first weeks of COVID-19, between writing marketing ebooks and making sure my toddler didn't launch herself off the staircase, it was all I could do to brush my teeth, much less monitor my feelings. After the Zoom layoff, Hopeless Bag Lady stepped onto her tattered podium in my mind. Worry Wart stood at attention, clipboard in-hand, and I began scrawling to-do lists for worst-case scenarios.

I didn't want to drop the kids off in two separate places, board a train, and spend hours a day commuting to an office job. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I'd been stressed, but I'd also watched my son ride his bike without training wheels and seen my daughter stand unassisted for the first time. In the car, I began toying with the idea of starting my own business. By the time we pulled into our driveway, I was jotting my company name onto a napkin.

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