What We Learned and Lost in The Pandemic: A Lydia’s House retrospective

By Mary Ellen Mitchell, co-director In the past two years many, our guests among them, were sent the mixed message that the highest and best contribution to society was isolation, unless you were an essential worker, at which point it was showing up at work despite an absence of childcare or living wage pay. At Lydia’s House, we filtered through these conflicting messages, worked hard to stay open, juggle our own childcare, and write Covid safety protocols while also attempting to keep abreast of the thousands of situational outbreaks, CDC guideline changes and opinion pieces on best practices. We knew