Name: Alone in this together: Stress rises as Granite Staters cope with isolation and irritation
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Alone in this together: Stress rises as Granite Staters cope with isolation and irritation

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Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.Please to continue reading.×Thank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.×You have reached the limit for free access to our important and valuable work.Subscribers, click below to login or register your subscription to continue receiving unlimited access to UnionLeader.com.Visitors, click to subscribe below today for immediate unlimited access to UnionLeader.com and our e-Edition, a page-for-page replica of the newspaper. Subscribers help us deliver trusted news, information and resources to connect the Granite State.You have reached the limit for free access to our important and valuable work.Subscribers, click below to login or register your subscription to continue receiving unlimited access to UnionLeader.com.Your current subscription does not provide access to this content.You are the owner of this article.Top, Sara Colson helps her son, Tristan, 11, with a school assignment as her daughter, Sydney, 9, watches at the dining room table of their Warner home. Bottom, Sara Colson works while, from left, Chloe, 13, Elijah, 11, Tristan and Sydney tackle their assignments.Sara Colson works from home with her kids including, Tristan, and Sydney, who were working on school assignments at the dining room table of their Warner home on Friday.Sara Colson helps her son, Tristan, with a school assignment as her daughter, Sydney watches at the dining room table of their Warner home.Sara Colson works from home as her children Elijah, bottom, and Sydney and Tristan do ther schoolwork at the dining room table of their Warner home on Friday.Sara Colson works from home while her children do schoolwork at the dining room table of their Warner home on Friday. Pictured are Chloe, 13, Elijah, 11, Tristan, 11, and Sydney, 9.The Winters family of Franklin is managing to stay connected despite the need for physical distancing. While keeping a safe distance, Emily, 6, and sister, Natalie, 4, recently brought a treat to their grandmother, Susan Winters, who lives in East Andover.The Winters family of Franklin is managing to stay connected despite the need for physical distancing. While keeping a safe distance, Emily, 6, and sister, Natalie, 4, recently brought a treat to their grandmother, Susan Winters, who lives in East Andover.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor at Catholic Charities of New Hampshire, keeps an eye on her daughters, Evelyn and Eleanor, while they all work from home during the pandemic.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor at Catholic Charities of New Hampshire, keeps an eye on her daughters, Evelyn and Eleanor, while they all work from home during the pandemic.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor, has to find a quiet space to speak with clients online.Top, Sara Colson helps her son, Tristan, 11, with a school assignment as her daughter, Sydney, 9, watches at the dining room table of their Warner home. Bottom, Sara Colson works while, from left, Chloe, 13, Elijah, 11, Tristan and Sydney tackle their assignments.Sara Colson works from home with her kids including, Tristan, and Sydney, who were working on school assignments at the dining room table of their Warner home on Friday.Sara Colson helps her son, Tristan, with a school assignment as her daughter, Sydney watches at the dining room table of their Warner home.Sara Colson works from home as her children Elijah, bottom, and Sydney and Tristan do ther schoolwork at the dining room table of their Warner home on Friday.Sara Colson works from home while her children do schoolwork at the dining room table of their Warner home on Friday. Pictured are Chloe, 13, Elijah, 11, Tristan, 11, and Sydney, 9.The Winters family of Franklin is managing to stay connected despite the need for physical distancing. While keeping a safe distance, Emily, 6, and sister, Natalie, 4, recently brought a treat to their grandmother, Susan Winters, who lives in East Andover.The Winters family of Franklin is managing to stay connected despite the need for physical distancing. While keeping a safe distance, Emily, 6, and sister, Natalie, 4, recently brought a treat to their grandmother, Susan Winters, who lives in East Andover.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor at Catholic Charities of New Hampshire, keeps an eye on her daughters, Evelyn and Eleanor, while they all work from home during the pandemic.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor at Catholic Charities of New Hampshire, keeps an eye on her daughters, Evelyn and Eleanor, while they all work from home during the pandemic.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor, has to find a quiet space to speak with clients online.For some, the problem might be too much togetherness; for others, it’s feeling far too alone.The coronavirus pandemic has forced a daunting set of challenges on Granite Staters.Many are working from home while essentially home-schooling their children. Others are worried about elderly relatives, taking on shopping and other chores to protect them from possible exposure to the virus. Some are isolated in their homes, depending on others to bring them groceries and supplies.Danielle Capelle, a mental health counselor for New Hampshire Catholic Charities, said families are “under stress that they’ve never imagined before.”It’s a strange combination of social isolation and lack of personal space, Capelle said. Meanwhile, people can’t go to places or do things they ordinarily would to relax and unwind. “It’s the stress of being a partner, being the teacher; it’s the stress of not having the normal outlets that they’d have,” she said.“I want to remind all parents, especially the ones with children at home, if they’re feeling overwhelmed and they’re struggling, it’s OK if you’re struggling. It’s OK if it’s hard.”As the mother of a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old, she feels it herself. So do many of her friends. Capelle said they used to get together regularly. Now they have to make do with virtual chats.“Our general consensus is that we were not meant to be stay-at-home parents,” she said. “And this is not how we wanted to find that out, but we know it now.”Brian Mooney, community of care manager at Makin’ It Happen in Manchester, said families are on edge. “They’re stressed out and they might be getting on each others’ nerves,” he said. “And everybody, I think, has a fear of other people right now, and of the unknown.”That fear is justified in this time of pandemic, he said. “This is a big deal,” he said. “It’s serious, and we’ve never experienced this before.”His organization recently launched a series of weekly webinars to help families cope. They intentionally called it: “I’m OK, are you OK?”“We didn’t name it ‘I’m fantastic, are you great?’” Mooney said. “It’s OK to just be OK. It’s OK to be frustrated, it’s OK to be stressed out, it’s OK to not have answers.”Most parents are not trained teachers, he said. “And so it’s OK to do the best you can,” he said. “And the best you can is good enough.”For the Winters family of Franklin, adapting to this new normal has been challenging.“We’re all in the same house and it’s tough,” said J.J. Winters. He works for Bank of New Hampshire, but instead of going to his office in Gilford most days, he’s been working in his basement. When the schools were closed, his wife took leave from her job so she can teach their two girls, Emily, who is 6, and Natalie, 4.They try to get outside every day, letting the kids ride their bikes and playing ball in the yard. But their younger daughter is having a hard time understanding what’s going on, Winters said. “She’s just cooped up, missing her friends.” They let her chat with her friends by video, “but it’s just not the same,” he said.Winters has been doing the grocery shopping and errands for his mom, Sue Winters, who lives in East Andover. “I leave the bags on her deck, and she’ll come out and get them,” he said. Sometimes, they bring the girls so they can visit with their grandmother from a safe distance.The toughest part? “It’s really trying to make sure everybody’s safe,” Winters said. “I’m wearing a mask, I’m limiting my exposure, and I’m the only one that’s really going out. I’m taking every precaution that I can so I don’t have to worry about my family.”Sue Winters, a retired teacher in her early 70s, said it’s been tough on her end as well. But all three of her grown children have been good about keeping in touch and dropping off food for her, while keeping their distance, she said. “They’re very protective,” she said. “I’m very lucky.”Still, she misses her granddaughters. Although they come by a couple times a week, she said, “I can’t hug them. I can’t sit and read stories to them like I usually do.”Winters used to go to exercise classes four days a week and walk with her friends. These days, she walks alone every morning to the post office and back, about two miles. She still walks with one neighbor in the afternoons, but they keep a safe distance apart.Winters has promised the girls that the Easter bunny is planning to visit her house to leave baskets and hide eggs for them to find. “Those are things I can look forward to,” she said.“This is not just a physical pandemic but a mental health pandemic” that’s affecting everyone, said Catholic Charities’ Capelle.So getting exercise is “one of the best things you can do for yourself,” she said. “Getting outside in your own yard, getting some vitamin D when you can from the sun, is going to be just incredibly important for everybody.”For kids, social interactions are still important. Capelle suggests finding ways to let kids chat or play games with their friends online.Carving out time and space for yourself is critical, she said. “It’s great to have family activities such as game nights or movie nights that you can do as a family, but we’re in this for the long haul, at least another month. So make sure that you also have your own individual quiet time that you can reflect by yourselves, or have your own quiet space where you’re not constantly being bombarded by somebody else in your area.”And don’t abandon “date night,” Capelle said. “That’s obviously not the same as getting a babysitter and going out to eat, but you still want to do a movie together or dinner just the two of you after the kids go to bed,” she said. “It’s important to still connect as adults.”Todd Fahey, state director of AARP, said the global pandemic has meant “the interruption of human connection.”As a result, he said, “I think there’s certainly a fair amount of apprehension, coupled with self-imposed isolation and solitude ... as people want to keep safe.”“The byproduct of that, particularly for older people, is they’re not connecting in a robust way with people that they normally would,” he said. “What we’re hearing is that there is a real yearning for connection.”AARP recently launched its Community Connections platform, which enables volunteers from online ‘mutual aid” groups to connect with folks who need a little help right now.New Hampshire has about 177,000 family caregivers helping aging parents and disabled relatives, Fahey said, even if many of them don’t think of themselves that way. “You might just go about doing what you do out of love or duty or affection, but you’re a caregiver,” he said.AARP has posted suggestions to help caregivers provide for their loved ones even during this time of isolation, such as writing letters, having meals delivered and setting up video chats. You can even arrange to chat by phone or video during a meal, Fahey said: “Put the speaker phone on, have dinner and talk. It’s not perfect, but it’s connection.”Several years ago, St. Katharine Drexel parish in Alton and Wolfeboro set up something called Flocknote to relay important information to parishioners. That has proven a godsend now, said Deacon Rick Hilton, pastoral associate.“In this crisis, we’re using it a little bit more often because people are really, really hungry for spiritual nourishment,” he said.His parish has a higher percentage of older residents whose children and grandchildren may live far away, Hilton said. A cadre of volunteers has been phoning individuals who live alone, just to check in and offer friendship and cheer. They call them “house calls.”“What they’re really doing is calling to ask that basic question: ‘How are you doing?’ ” Hilton said.“The impression I have now is the volunteer callers are probably benefiting as much as the people who are receiving the calls,” he said. “It’s really heartwarming.”AARP’s Fahey said he has hope that some good will come out of the current suffering. “I think we are definitely going to grow closer as we stand apart,” he said.“I do have to believe we’re going to come through it, not without a fair amount of pain, but we’ll have an opportunity to look at ourselves and our relationships differently, particularly people who are caregivers.”Hilton agrees. “I think in some ways this has reminded us what really matters,” he said. “And I think some of the things that we worried about seem so inconsequential right now. Our relationships with one another matter more right now. We really treasure them.”Winters of Franklin said his family has already found that silver lining in all this. “For us, it’s just spending family time,” he said. “I’m not normally around this much, so it’s nice to be able to spend some quality time.”The Miss New Hampshire Scholarship Program is postponing its annual competition until at least July and contestants are doing what they can to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.© Copyright 2020 , 100 William Loeb Drive Manchester, NH&nbsp;| &nbsp;|Powered by from .

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Alone in this together: Stress rises as Granite Staters cope with isolation and irritation

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