As women, we tend to orientate our lives to timelines set by the generations before us. It’s not great. It’s often detrimental, in fact, but it’s prevalent.

We grow up absorbing mantras about hitting certain goals before the age of 30, finding a partner while we’re ‘in our prime’ or ‘before all of the good ones run out’, and to have kids before our bodies are less able to carry them. The inherent pressure to achieve, enjoy and progress within society’s rigid guidelines is at the core of so many of our lives – and it’s only magnified by our ability to monitor and compare against the rate friends and peers hit their own milestones (thanks, social media).

So where does something like a catastrophic global virus leave us? Uncertain about the future and gutturally unsettled by watching the plans we’ve been taught to depend on being ripped from beneath our feet. It’s disorientating and nerve-racking, but we can at least take solace in the fact that we’re all going through it together.

Coronavirus: the pandemic ruined our timelines and it’s okay to be upset about it