Millions of Americans have been isolating away from the world for weeks now due to the coronavirus pandemic. While this virus has wreaked havoc on all of our lives, one mother of five is speaking out this week to reveal what she sees as the one positive side of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Joy McAdams is a mother from Bremen, Georgia who has four of her five children under her roof right now, and she admits that adjusting their lives to the coronavirus era was a struggle at first.
“The conversion to home school was a big challenge on all of us. I found a few weeks in that I was playing the victim. I had this attitude towards my family, like I had it the worst, like I had the biggest challenge,” McAdams told Fox News.
It was only when McAdams called a family meeting to discuss this that she realized everyone in her house had their own stresses, so she decided they needed to focus on supporting one another instead of on placing blame. Her entire outlook changed one night when she was cooking dinner for her family, something she rarely has time to do during normal times.
“I looked at the backyard and the kids, the teenagers were actually playing together and interacting. And, you know, I felt conflicted because so many people are experiencing so much loss, I’m starting to see loss and it’s scary, but yet at the same time, look at this family time,” she said.
It was then that McAdams realized this pandemic has presented her family with the opportunity to create memories that will last a lifetime. It suddenly hit her that as things start to go back to normal in Georgia, she might not get the opportunity to spend this kind of quality time with her children again.
McAdams took to LinkedIn to share her thoughts of gratitude with the world, and she was shocked when her post quickly went viral. She could not believe how many responses she got from people who felt the same way she did.
“I wrote it down, and I think just a lot of people resonated with that because they were starting to see the same thing themselves,” she explained.
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