If quarantine has got you down, know that you’re not alone.
On Tuesday’s episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” both the host and her guest, actor and cookbook author Tia Mowry, opened up about their own experiences with mental health struggles amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — especially as mothers living through lockdown with little ones.
“I think we’re all, like everyone on the planet, is playing some kind of mental game at this point, just because you’re so isolated,” Clarkson explained of the day-to-day difficulties many are facing. “Your world has completely changed from your daily routine, and your kids — if you have kids in your house — that’s a whole other thing. Those poor little dudes are just running around like, ‘What is happening?’ My little 6-year-old is like, ‘Is sickness still happening?’”
None of the answers are easy to contextualize for the kids, much less to wrestle with for one’s self — and according to Mowry, who’s mom to a 9-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter, that leads to its own struggle.
“You know, for a minute, when quarantine first started, I was hiding my emotions from my kids, because I didn’t want them to see mom kind of all over the place,” the 42-year-old said.
The former “Sister, Sister” star said that, in her case, “all over the place” means she vacillates between moments of “Yeah! I got this,” and moments of “No, I don’t got this.”
“I was just focusing on everybody else and not myself,” she said. “You know what I mean? And moms tend to do that a lot.”
While Clarkson nodded along with that notion, Mowry spoke about how meditation and self-reflection have helped her — and how similar efforts might help others.
“I just started crying,” she continued. “Like everything just started to let go and release, and it was very healthy for me. So my point in sharing that story is, during this time, if anybody wants some advice, especially when it comes to your mental health, No. 1 is know that you are worth it. Know that you are worth taking that time out to give yourself some sort of self-care. That’s exactly what I did, and … it’s helping me during this whole crazy situation that we’re in right now."
It’s an important point, because as Clarkson reiterated, mothers often put themselves at the end of the line when it comes to any kind of care.
“We are so worried about everybody else’s stuff — like their mental health, how they’re doing, checking in with them, making sure their needs are being met — and we are the last ones that we look at,” she said, adding, “That is so destructive, not just for you, but your family as well.”