By Alexa J. Garza

The title is a little misleading: I’m not a teenager anymore. This frigid day in 2022, I’m now a grown woman in my (very) late twenties. Some might even call me an ‘adult’ – my eleven-year-old daughter certainly does. Over a decade ago, I had only just turned sixteen when the positive pregnancy test showed up, and I made a decision that would change the course of my life forever.

Becoming a ‘teen mom’ shortly before my seventeenth birthday made my initial journey through motherhood pretty unique. The reality of vaginal tears, sore nipples and peeing a little whenever I laughed, coughed or sneezed was one that I had to grow accustomed to early on in life while my body and brain were still developing.

My daughter was six months old when I started college, which was an experience characterised by pumping my breast milk in the school bathroom and bussing home after long, full days of class playing ‘Student’ to play the role of ‘Mom’. I tried to relate to my similarly aged peers, but my 18-year-old life was simply too unconventional; I only made one lasting friend from my post-secondary years.

During my pregnancy, I was reminded by everyone of the struggle I was about to endure, but no one warned me of the loneliness that would come with teen motherhood. Luckily, my family supported me with ferocity: my mothers, my father and my sisters were the village that helped to raise my daughter.

I lived under my parents’ roof for a number of years sporadically as I tried to establish my footing as a young adult with a young child. Through graduation, volunteering, job transitions and a second stint in university, my family made themselves available for my daughter when I wasn’t. They babysat her when I went to class, kept her for sleepovers when I was too exhausted to parent, and otherwise supported the both of us however we needed.

Then the Coronavirus pandemic hit, I wasn’t prepared for the truest reality of being a single mom. I’d never had to rely on myself so fully before, neither as a parent nor as a young woman. Suddenly, I couldn’t call on my family for physical support. My daughter couldn’t visit her grandparents because the risk of feeding COVID to their vulnerabilities was simply too great.

When I’m craving time away from my daughter – time to be a twenty-nine-year-old woman – it slips away from me. My daughter is watching me as I battle the constant uncertainty of life while single-handedly juggling a plate full of responsibilities. I have little privacy, little freedom and a lot of fear. There is no one who can hide my daughter from this war, no grandparent or aunt or friend who can sweep her away from the chaos that COVID is wreaking on our family.

Objectively, however, the instability brought by the Coronavirus has also acted as a floodlight to many areas of my life that were previously unseen. I found myself, as the first lockdown passed, making realisations about my reality and my parenting, realisations that I potentially wouldn’t have come to for much longer, if at all, had it not been for the pandemic.

I began to make some much needed positive change in my life, and although my daughter and I still struggle to find light in the darkness on occasion, an unexpected benefit of the pandemic is that I’ve grown to know her more than I ever thought I possibly could. I can read her mind like an open book; she can read my mind in the same way.

The pandemic has dissipated the divide between adult and teen parents, the very same one that has haunted me since I became a mother. Caregivers are united beneath the strain of the pandemic; my daughter is one of the millions of children suffering, and I am one of the millions of parents trying to help. COVID has shown me that at the end of the day, when schools are closed and jobs are lost, the only support I can guarantee is the support I provide for myself and my daughter.

Perhaps an even greater lesson I’ve learned is that my capacity to parent my daughter lies entirely in my capacity to care for myself. I am still a young woman trying to find my way in this COVID-ridden world, and every day with my daughter is a new one. She benefits the most from our relationship when I care for myself, especially on the loneliest days. If I can give anything to my daughter amid this lacklustre life, it is the same kindness, patience and understanding that I give to myself when I am struggling to keep my head up.

Parenting during the pandemic has taught me to care for my inner child. In doing so, during the most uncertain times of our lives, I can be the most stable version of myself for my young daughter.