**Trigger warning: this article contains references to miscarriage and baby loss.**
We all remember too well the night Boris Johnson announced the UK was going into lockdown to minimise the spread of Covid-19 – marking the beginning of years of isolation, loss… and incessant hand washing. Two weeks previously, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had officially declared that the world was in the midst of a pandemic, confirming what months of gloomy headlines had already predicted.
Today, on the five-year anniversary of that world-shattering announcement from the WHO, and after a weekend where countrywide events marked the occasion, many of us will be reflecting on the hundreds of thousands of lives lost here in the UK, and the millions more across the world. We lost loved ones en-masse; over 220,000 people died of Covid-19 in the UK or from secondary conditions caused by the disease. People lost mothers, fathers, children and other close family members and friends, forced to miss out on final moments of farewell, ‘attend’ funerals over Zoom and grieve in the isolation of their own homes. The experience of losing someone we love is always painful, but the string of UK lockdowns made them even more excruciating. And though the pandemic impacted us all differently, the collective sense of loss was palpable. As former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen referred to it this weekend while speaking at a memorial event to mark the fifth anniversary since the outbreak, “a shadow passed over us."
And those who didn't experience the death of a loved one experienced loss in other ways. We lost our connection to the outside world, we lost our power of decision making and we lost jobs – many reported losing a sense of self. Women in particular were disproportionately affected in terms of employment – since women were the most affected by job losses and furlough during the Covid years. Across the world, violence against women and girls significantly increased; in what, horrifyingly, became known as the ‘Shadow pandemic’. Here in the UK, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline received 40,000 calls in the first three months of lockdown alone: an 80% increase on pre-pandemic figures.
Flexible working has been a lifeline for working mums, disabled women, and those with caring responsibilities.
Women also bore the brunt of many caring responsibilities due to school and nursery closures during the pandemic – which only widened the unpaid work gap between men and women. IVF and fertility services were stalled; pregnant women felt more alone than ever. We were more likely to report mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, too.
Of course, there are happy stories from the pandemic. There were lockdown weddings and distanced meet-cutes. Wellness habits that stuck. Precious time spent with family. Some of us might even admit that we can find ourselves longing, even now, for some of the simpler aspects of pandemic life – be it quiet days in the garden or an excuse to spend a whole weekend watching Netflix.
‘Leaving home at 16 was a radical act of self-belief’.
There will be many women today reflecting on their time during the pandemic with sadness, gratitude, anger even – some, like me, may not even feel like they're fully out the other side of it. Curious, I spoke to three brilliant women who shared their own personal experiences of the Covid pandemic with me, and how they feel five years on. Here are their stories.
“I moved in with my Hinge date during the pandemic – now we’re engaged, and have a daughter”
As an NHS worker, the Covid pandemic brought its own set of challenges for Hannah Cowles, 34, from Birmingham. “I’m a Speech and Language Therapist, but I chose to be deployed on the frontline during lockdown – first helping with testing and then with vaccinating,” she says. “I wanted to be helpful. And when Covid hit, it was really isolating, so it helped keep me busy. My colleagues became family in a way.
“Before the pandemic, I really wasn’t looking for anything serious romantically,” she adds. “I had been single and living alone for three years, dating the wrong men, frankly – so I just didn’t think that it would happen for me."
As most of the UK went into lockdown, Hannah continued leaving her home for work everyday. “It was scary. People were getting really sick. I remember getting home each night and having to strip off my uniform to wash it, ready to start again. Sometimes, it did get lonely, which was why I thought I’d try a dating app again.”
Hannah says she ‘liked’ her now-fiancé, Elliot, on Hinge because she recognised him from her local community gym. “I thought we might get along because we have a mutual interest in fitness. Plus he lived nearby in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, where I lived at the time. I sent him a message and we started talking, sending long messages to each other. He was different from anyone else I’d spoken to on the apps and I appreciated his openness: he told me he didn’t want to mess around and was looking for something serious, which was a nice thing to hear.”
The couple’s first date was a walk along the local canal, once socially-distanced walks were allowed. “He brought snacks for a picnic from his local deli – we drank gin tins and chatted for hours,” she says. “We did have a little kiss, which technically wasn’t allowed – but it felt right. It felt serious early on.”
From then on, the couple embraced all aspects of pandemic dating. Walking tours and online classes from salsa dancing to Caribbean cooking, hikes in the Peak District; meeting each other's families on doorsteps. “It was really fun to do things we wouldn’t have pre-pandemic. It gave us a real love of the outdoors because we spent most of our time walking – and there was no real external pressure from the outside world,” she says.
Before long, the couple decided to move in together and become each other’s ‘bubble’. “It did move quite fast. Elliot’s dad fell very ill during the pandemic; I lost a close friend. We found ourselves being there for each other in tough situations very quickly. It just made sense for us – we even decided to go travelling together once restrictions were lifted.
“Looking back, I really do think the pandemic formed the basis of our relationship,” she says. “There was no stress. There was no dressing up and going out to bars, neither of us were busy – we weren’t working around each other’s plans or big work commitments. It was just the two of us.”
Fast forward five years, and Hannah and Elliot are engaged to be married. Aptly, Elliot proposed during a mountain hike in Gran Canaria; the couple have continued their love of walking, and true to their plan, even travelled the world together – taking a joint sabbatical at the end of 2021.
Today, there’s even another hiker on the team, too, since the couple welcomed a little girl, Grace, in January 2024. “It sounds cheesy, but meeting Elliot changed my life – it’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Hannah says. “The world was changing so rapidly and we became each other’s everything during that time – I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer during lockdown, and it was the loneliest experience of my life”
Leeanne Graham, 40, says she wasn’t immediately concerned when she found a small lump in her breast one morning in October 2020. "I had really got into my running and fitness during the pandemic, and had actually lost a bit of weight – I thought perhaps I was noticing normal changes in my breast tissue," she says.
But after an appointment with the GP and a referral to a breast clinic, things started to feel a bit more serious. “I was 35 at the time, so I kept being told it was not going to be anything sinister – but after an ultrasound, I was informed I’d need a mammogram and a biopsy. I suddenly thought: ‘They don’t know what this is’. I'm not necessarily one to jump to conclusions, but it was the silence in the room and the lack of reassurance.”
Ten days later, Leeanne was finally given her results. “They told me they had found a small – but very aggressive – fast-growing cancer in my left breast. It was triple negative. I was stage three. It was in my lymph nodes.
“I just sat there in silence. My friend Charlene, who I’d taken along for support, was asking the questions. Then suddenly, I let out this roar. It was like all the emotion was coming out of me. I didn’t have any words.”
From then on, it was relentless scans and tests – and Leeanne was scheduled for her first round of chemotherapy in December 2020. “I think having chemo is really romanticised in things like film and television,” she says. “I thought I'd be there, cosying up with a blanket, talking and making friends with people in the same situation – but I rarely saw the same person twice. The chairs were all spaced out because of the pandemic; you couldn’t see anyone’s face because of the masks.
“I felt this complete loss of control – and I had to deal with it all on my own, masked up and terrified. I was so depressed and lonely. I wanted to run away during every session. One day, I arrived in pieces, and literally fell on the floor having a panic attack. That was the one time I got a hug from one of the nurses, which I’m forever grateful for.”
It took 16 rounds of chemotherapy, a lumpectomy surgery – which she also had to attend alone – and 15 rounds of radiotherapy before Leeanne was told she was cancer-free. “Even then, all I wanted to do was celebrate with my friends,” she says. “Three of them did come to the door with gift baskets, with their phones out because the others were on a video call.”
Reflecting on her experience, Leeanne notes how important human connection is during cancer care and recovery. “I would never say I’m envious of anyone with cancer because I know how hard it is, but I do sometimes think about the people going through it today and how they can have their loved ones around to support them. I just felt so alone at home, all those nights when I was so ill.”
Five years later, Leeanne has sought therapy to process the trauma she went through during that time. “As a Black woman, I’ve learned to advocate for myself and find a therapist that ‘gets’ me,” she says. “That has been really healing. If I went through this again, I hope I’d advocate for myself more.”
Today, Leeanne is planning to run her second marathon, and continues to run her successful personal assistance business, Lava The Agency. “I’m very grateful. There’s something powerful about taking charge of my life, because I lost so much control back then. There’s always the anxiety that the cancer will return – but I’m still having therapy to try and deal with that.
“I’m reclaiming my happiness,” she adds. “Getting fit and strong again proves to me that my body can do amazing, wonderful things. I can't continue to live in sadness and anger, when that's not the person that I am – it's not who I was before the cancer, either. But I do often feel some bitterness about my cancer experience. Remembering the pandemic brings up very mixed emotions. I have a great in-person support network now, but I wish I had that back then.”
“I had my IVF delayed during lockdown, before suffering my third devastating miscarriage”
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Kelly Robertson, 46, welcomed the seclusion Covid-19 provided – in some ways. In March 2020, when the pandemic was announced, she had recently discovered that her fifth round of IVF had been unsuccessful, following two devastating miscarriages in 2018 and 2019. Her plans to go for her sixth round were in limbo, since fertility clinics had closed with immediate effect, with no confirmation when they would reopen.
“It was horrific,” she says. “The early pandemic was such an uncertain time, and I just didn’t know what it would mean for us. I felt I didn’t have the time for these delays. I was 41 at the time, and my husband Mark was 48 – and we were already on our sixth round of IVF. I was so exhausted by it all.
“But in some ways, going into that lockdown bubble was a godsend,” she adds. “We didn’t have to pretend we were okay anymore – we could shut ourselves away and focus on what we wanted to do next. I didn’t have to go to baby showers, get dressed up and plaster on a smile; at the most I had to log on to Zoom, pass on my well wishes and log off again.”
By June 2020 and after months of waiting and wondering, fertility clinics were given the okay to reopen – and Kelly embarked on her next round of IVF.
Happily, she fell pregnant again – but at her seven week scan, it was devastating news once more. “We were told there was something wrong with the embryonic sac. Our dream was shattered all over again,” she says.
Kelly was told she couldn’t have a surgically managed miscarriage (a procedure which removes the pregnancy tissue from the uterus) due to Covid restrictions. “It was devastating for me, because one of my previous miscarriages was very traumatic,” she says. “I went home, broken, and spent an entire day of utter frustration, anger, tears and desperation, as I made phone call after phone call trying to establish if I could somehow have the operation.
“The last thing I wanted was to have this miscarriage at home. I looked into having the op done privately, but it was £2000 – it just didn’t feel fair when it would previously have been available on the NHS.”
Sadly, Kelly was forced to opt for a medically managed miscarriage instead (which involves taking medication to break down the lining of the womb). “I had to go to hospital on my own. It almost felt like I was getting an abortion, which was a horrible thought when I wanted this baby so much. Hours later, it happened at home. I had to return to the hospital for a scan, and I remember seeing my empty womb. Not long ago, I saw my baby there – I remember thinking how much effort it had taken to get her in there, and yet she’d left me so quickly.”
By December 2020, Kelly was contemplating her seventh round of IVF – though she admits she was exhausted. “With each round I found it harder and harder, physically and emotionally,” she says. “I wondered if I could face doing it again, and there were times when Mark questioned how many times we could put ourselves through it. But we always said we wouldn’t leave any embryos in the freezer, so to speak – so we decided to try again.”
As it turns out, the seventh time was a charm. “I fell pregnant again, and though we were thrilled, every scan would bring intense anxiety. The world was opening up, but Covid still scared us – I had caught it just before I fell pregnant, and it was still unknown what that might mean for me.
“We finally welcomed our little girl, Maggie, via caesarean in October 2021. She is amazing. I kept a journal of everything we went through to have her, as I always want her to know about our journey and how much we wanted her.”
Kelly says she still holds on to a lot of trauma around pregnancy, but looking back, she feels some gratitude for the time Covid gave her to process what happened. “We could just be in our own bubble,” she says. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through – but the pandemic will always remind me of the time we met our little girl, too. I can always hold on to that.”
**If you have been impacted by any of the issues discussed above, visit Tommy’s, the largest UK pregnancy and baby loss charity, for support and resources, or Macmillan Cancer Support, for advice, support and access to an online cancer community.**
