Still coming to terms with COVID-19

When COVID-19 reached the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley in the spring of 2020, Oluwaseyi “Seyi” Arogundade was 14 years old. At the time, she was just excited for an extra week of spring break. She had no idea how much it would change her and the world around her.

“I was super excited, just being able to be off of school,” she said. “I didn’t realize that this pandemic would have such a lasting and reaching impact.”

As weeks turned into months, Arogundade said, she found she had a harder time connecting to her peers.

“Even little things like going to the grocery store with my family, it was just something that didn’t really happen anymore,” she said. “My parents wanted me to stay safe, and wanted us to stay safe.”

Arogundade also felt anxious watching things happen around her that she was unable to control. She coped by writing, something she’d done from an early age. Talking with others, she said, was harder.

“Even though I could FaceTime and text and call, I didn’t really do that,” she said. “I was just kind of nervous and on edge throughout those months.”

When she returned to school, Arogundade said, she had to relearn how to connect with people.

“I never really thought that talking to people was something you had to exercise,” she said. “But when I went from talking to people every day and interacting with so many people on a daily basis to not really doing that anymore, it was really hard to get comfortable doing that again.”

She also began to feel alienated from some peers as she watched social justice movements that rose to prominence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder that summer.

“Seeing the death of a Black man, a Black man who looked like my father and my brother, and a Black man who looked like a lot of the people in my life, was quite traumatizing,” Arogundade said. “Seeing the people that I would once call friends at the time belittle his death in a sense, kind of shocked me. And it confused me.”

Those experiences served a big part of shaping her perspective, she said. Now 17 years old, the Lewiston High students feels she has a stronger sense of self and knows who she is and what she wants.

She aspires to inform the public through a career in investigative journalism. She cited reporters covering the war in Ukraine as an inspiration.

“In ninth grade, maybe I would have grown out of it, but I was a very wishy-washy person,” she said. “I wasn’t really sure of myself, or my beliefs or my values. I think the pandemic and just all the things that happened within the year of 2020 helped me know what I want within friendships, and who I want around me, and what values I hold really dear.”

Delaney Snaadt

Delaney Snaadt, 21, was just finishing her freshman year at the University of Idaho, sitting in a car with her friends, when she learned the school was canceling in-person classes.

“I remember,” she said, “reading it aloud, and all of us being like, ‘What are we gonna do?’ ”

Snaadt struggled in online classes, she said. She also had trouble growing her social circle as she was cut off from many of the formative college experiences other students before her might have had.

“I kind of stopped maturing there for a minute, just because I got stuck in that freshman year,” she said. “Everything just stopped.”

Snaadt struggled with depression for most of the pandemic, she said. Online therapy was also harder for her than the in-person sessions she was used to.

“I had to make a lot of really conscious choices about taking care of myself and not just wallowing in despair in my room,” she said.

There were also some positives, Snaadt said. She also had more time to reflect, and learned to let go of some of the perfectionism in school that had held her back from experiences in the past.

Snaadt spent more time reflecting on herself and her feelings, she said, and going on walks or doing other activities by herself to fill the time.

“It was nice to just be a person, if that makes sense. I think we get caught up a lot in, like, needing to go to work, and make money and needing to do all of these things,” she said. “Getting out of that, like, ‘We need to always be producing something’ and just being able to sit and relax and be with yourself.”

Snaadt, who is majoring in wildlife resources, also began working as a wildland emergency medical technician during the pandemic. The experience made her a more empathetic person, she said, and better at approaching and understanding people whose experience is different from her own.

“That’s definitely something that I don’t think I would have done without the pandemic,” she said. “So it definitely has made me a lot more empathetic.”

Melyssa Andrews

For Melyssa Andrews, 45, the COVID-19 pandemic was marked by the loss of loved ones, seeing the impact on families like her own through her work at a local hospital, and financial hardship.

Andrews lost a grandmother, grandfather, and several friends — some of whom didn’t believe COVID-19 was real, she said. One friend who died was only 42.

“She said, ‘I’m going to be fine.’ And then her son wrote and said they had taken her to the hospital,” Andrews said. “And then the next thing you know, on a Sunday, she was gone.”

Andrews, who lives in Clarkston, saw her own family’s grief reflected in the people she met working in a hospital, she said.

“I took a lot of things home with me, like, a lot of people coming in to see their family that had passed away, or that couldn’t see their family that had passed away,” she said. “I know that feeling of waiting, being the last one there, not knowing if you’re gonna see that family member to say goodbye before they’re gone.”

Seeing those hardships close up made her a more understanding person, Andrews said, even when someone was showing her their worst.

“Maybe they’re screaming at you because they just lost someone,” she said. “Maybe they’re screaming at you because they’re terrified.”

Andrews also saw herself become less social during the pandemic, she said, which she’s trying to come back from.

She suffers long-term health issues from getting COVID-19, Andrews said. But she’s still a happy person.

“I still don’t have the energy levels I used to,” she said. “But I’m also grateful that even if I’m tired, I’m here.”

Nancy A. Hansen

Nancy A. Hansen, of Lewiston, first became aware of the COVID-19 pandemic during a stop at her local thrift store, she said.

“Thrifters were wearing masks, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s different.’ And then in a few days, I saw notices in the Tribune, and then very soon, we had an outbreak,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is really serious.’ ”

Hansen had “been on Social Security for a few years,” when the pandemic hit, she said. But COVID-19 made her more aware of her mortality.

“I really thought, ‘I’m in great health, and I could do so much and I’m strong, and I work out and, and, you know, I’m gonna live 30 more years,’ ” she said.

But that soon changed, she said. Even taking precautions like masking and vaccines didn’t always guarantee safety. Some peers did both, she said, and still died from COVID-19.

“I’m a senior, very active senior, but it kind of really opened my eyes to my own mortality,” she said.

Early in the pandemic, Hansen said, she started being hyper-aware of the people around her because of that risk. She felt vulnerable, and she felt angry.

But over time, Hansen said, she felt herself becoming more adaptive. She set her will in order, cleaned her home, and learned how to do basic home repairs, she said.

Hansen said her increased awareness of her mortality also made her more mindful, and appreciative of friends with whom she reconnected over social media.

“Some of them, we just became very close,” she said. “(We shared) paragraphs and paragraphs of what’s going on. I never used to be a domestic type, I’m still not, but still, I was like, ‘Oh you’re cooking out for dinner?’ and just, the little things became more important.”

She also learned to be more patient than she had been in the past, Hansen said. She’s better equipped to deal with things that used to upset her, like aggressive drivers or a neighbor revving their engine in the early morning.

“I really became more spiritual,” she said. “Not necessarily religious dogma, but I’ve become more kind to myself and others.”

Sun may be contacted at rsun@lmtribune.com or on Twitter at @Rachel_M_Sun. This report is made in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting, the Lewiston Tribune and the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.