The COVID-19 pandemic has called on us to find creative ways to connect and learn. In rural western Massachusetts I had scheduled a training for 20 practitioners who work with parents and infants to meet together for two days of learning on April 15 and 16th. Instead I rapidly adapted the training to the online setting. I have had the pleasure of meeting weekly with an extraordinary group that includes peer recovery coaches on the front lines supporting moms with opioid use disorders, clinicians and administrators from Child Protective Services, physicians, occupational therapists, early intervention specialists, and early childhood educators to learn together for a course in “Community-Based Parent-Infant Relationship Support.

Leila was in the early stages of labor in mid-March when she and her husband learned they would have to go it alone. They already had planned a home birth, but neither they nor their doula had yet mastered the techniques of remote healthcare as we as a society tried to find our footing amidst the chaos of the exploding pandemic.

Safety and trust go hand-in-hand with a sense of belonging. The fact that those who stay home and spend their time watching funny YouTube videos are protecting the front line healthcare workers offers a striking demonstration of belonging. The virus itself shows us how interconnected we are.

When it became clear that all our lives would all be upended for an indefinite period of time by the corona virus pandemic, as an infant-parent mental health specialist my first thought went to families due to deliver babies in the coming days, weeks, and months. Some degree of fear and uncertainty around the birth of a baby is typical. Expecting parents worry that the baby will be damaged, that the “real” baby will be different from the wished for baby. Now for pregnant women and their families these ordinary feelings are suddenly exponentially magnified.

So while there is much to say about the lessons from her brilliant book, I am writing this post to highlight the insights she offers into the complex intertwining of poverty and parent-child relationships.

In preparation for teaching a course on early childhood mental health, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with the profound wisdom of his writings. While Winnicott wrote extensively for both a general and a professional audience, I discovered, on careful re-reading of his essay for a general audience entitled “The Ordinary Devoted Mother” that it contains a vast wealth of ideas. In fact, if I had to assign only one paper for the entire course, this could be it.