WHO WE’LL BE AFTER THIS

In the After, I Will Say ‘No’

Turns out a pandemic offers great practice for setting boundaries

Ellen O'Connell Whittet
Forge
Published in
3 min readJul 7, 2020

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A mother reads while holding her baby in her arms.
Photo: nattrass/Getty Images

I was 25 weeks pregnant when my state’s governor issued the nation’s first shelter-in-place order. As the world around me became unrecognizable, I clung to the security of my birth plan. I would deliver in a birth center rather than a…

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Ellen O'Connell Whittet
Forge
Writer for

Ellen is the author of the memoir What You Become in Flight, the story of her exodus from ballet. She lives in California.