Five Years Later: A Reflection

The Last Five Years

The last five years have been difficult for me.

COVID was part of it, but not the whole story. I know I’m not alone in saying those years were heavy—most of us were carrying grief, uncertainty, and change in ways we never expected. This is just my story, my piece of what those years held.

The top photo of me—the one at the very start—is who I am today, and yes, I look different than I did five years ago. But the weight I carry isn’t only physical. The other night, I was on the phone with my mom, talking about how the past five years have been some of the most emotionally challenging of my life. After that call, I scrolled through my friends list to remember some of those I had lost—and I stopped cold. Since 2020, fifteen of my friends have died. Fifteen. Their names and faces came rushing back, and I realized just how much these years have been filled with loss, change, and survival.

The second photo—the one just below—was taken the month before COVID shut everything down. Two of the people in it are gone now. The friend in the middle was diagnosed with a brain tumor just weeks later. Within four months, she was gone. Another dear friend in the picture would also pass away. When I look at it now, I see our smiles frozen in a moment when we had no idea what was about to happen.

Of those fifteen, several losses still sting sharply. One was a close mom friend, younger than me, kids in the same grades as mine, gone within months of her cancer diagnosis. Another was one of my oldest friends, a professor in Japan, who died overseas. I still sometimes imagine he’s just a message away, still living his life across the ocean. More recently, a dear coworker and friend died of metastatic breast cancer. She was three months younger than me. And my father-in-law—who loved me as if I were his own daughter—died from a traumatic brain injury. Others were lost to cancer, a car accident, or early-onset dementia.

COVID added its own layers of difficulty. As a superintendent, I was leading through a crisis none of us had ever experienced before. Even with supportive staff, parents, and a board, the uncertainty and the responsibility weighed heavily. And at home, I was still a mom—watching one child struggle online and then again when school reopened, and another become isolated from the activities she loved. I carried not just their pain, but the collective pain of the families I served.

Looking back now, I see that those years left their mark on me. But they also changed me. I had to learn how to cope differently—for my health, for my family, for myself. Slowly, steadily, I did.

I wish I could say transformation erased the grief of these past five years, but it hasn’t. I still miss my friends. I still feel the sharp edges of loss. But I also feel more alive than I have in years.

Here’s the truth about midlife: we don’t know how much time we have left. Who knew in February 2020 that two of the friends in that picture would be gone less than five years later? I sure didn’t. And I didn’t know how I would cope. But as I’ve aged, I’ve learned how to carry both loss and resilience.

Midlife gives us the gift of hindsight, yes. But it also gives us perspective: life is too short, and it’s not too late to make a change.