Commentary
As we move toward 2026, I keep asking myself a question that feels both personal and communal. Have our relationships actually healed from COVID-19? Not on the surface but in the places that matter most.
When COVID-19 hit, it did not just disrupt daily life. It exposed fault lines within families, friendships, workplaces, churches, governments, and communities. Jobs were lost, businesses collapsed, and people were praised or punished based on compliance. Longstanding relationships fractured under the weight of fear, certainty, and institutional pressure.
Years later, the emotional intensity has faded; the arguments are quieter. The anger is no longer explosive; politeness has returned.
But healing feels less certain.
When I look honestly at my own life, I do not see full restoration. I see space—not the kind filled with rage or righteous attachment like during the height of the vaccine debates but a quieter and heavier distance, a closeness that has not returned, and a love that used to be effortless and now feels just out of reach.
In some relationships, everything appears fine. Conversations are polite. Holidays are civil. But underneath, something essential is missing: the deep ease, the unspoken trust, and the feeling of being fully known and accepted.
I have only one friend who has ever apologized. She thanked me for continuing to talk with her and for explaining my position without abandoning her. She was vaccine-injured and went blind in one eye shortly after receiving the injection on the same side. Her apology did not come from ideology but from lived experience.
Others never came back.
I have friendships that began in early childhood. One friend, whom I have known since we were 5 and 7 years old, was the first person to write a check to support my business expansions. We could go months or longer without seeing each other, and when we were in the same room again, the love and connection were instantly present. When her parents’ house burned down, she lived with us while they rebuilt. We grew up together.
Now I have not seen her since COVID.
I write emails. I send texts. I make phone calls. The responses are always kind: busy mom, divorce, and life is hard. Of course, life is hard. We have always been busy moms and entrepreneurs. That was never the barrier before. Now every reach falls flat. The space remains.
I see it in my extended family as well. All of my father’s siblings—with the exception of my uncle, who lives here on the farm with me—have backed away, not dramatically, not angrily; just distance where there used to be closeness.
There is also a man I have called uncle my entire life, even though he is technically a close family friend. He has lived alongside our family for decades. He lived on my father’s farm, invested in our restaurants, worked with us, and shared holidays and daily life. During COVID, something shifted. He moved away, and when I reach out now, there are reasons: dog sitters, travel, and expenses. But the truth feels simpler—there is space that was never there before.
I do not think that it is only COVID. I think geography plays a role, too. Moving to Texas created its own stigma. People from my hometown of Ithaca, New York, gossip quietly. Sometimes they whisper as if someone might be listening. And maybe someone is. I hear what is said. COVID radicalized them. COVID changed them.
COVID did change me, but not in the way people assume. It opened my eyes to bureaucracy. It showed me how fragile freedom really is. It revealed how quickly moral certainty can be outsourced. It reoriented what I believe is truly important. But that awakening was not shared by everyone. And that divergence created separation.
Yes, I resented the emails about the most comfortable N95 mask.
Yes, I resented the social media posts celebrating the very lockdowns that were crushing my family’s livelihood.
That anger was real.
But it has softened.
What remains now is grief.
I see the same quiet distance forming in marriages where one partner trusted the narrative and the other trusted their body, their faith, and their intuition. The separation is not always loud. Sometimes it is subtle. But it is there.
And yet something else is also true.
Many of my closest relationships have formed in the past five years. A dear friend recently told me the same is true for him: new friendships, new alignments, and new communities built on shared values, honesty, and clarity that came at a cost.
That raises an uncomfortable question. Did COVID clear space? Did it remove relationships that could not withstand pressure and make room for new ones?
If that is true, what do we do with the grief of what was lost?
Because I miss many of the people who are no longer in my day-to-day life. I no longer carry the same anger. But understanding alone has not repaired the rupture.
Everybody made decisions based on the information they were given, their belief systems, and the pressures surrounding them. I can hold that truth and still mourn what was broken.
So how do we heal this?
How do we bring our relationships back to love?
How do we close the fissures and gaps that still exist quietly between us and seal them with something stronger than agreement?
For society to thrive, maybe we need to become experts in loving people we disagree with. Maybe we also need to learn how to agree with people we do not love when what they say rings true.
Divide and conquer is an old and effective tool. It works best when we are convinced that we know and others do not. The past few years have shown us how dangerous that certainty can be when it replaces humility and relationship.
There will come another moment, perhaps sooner than we think, when mass noncompliance will be required again. Community will fracture again. And once more, we will be asked to heal.
Here we are heading into 2026, and the elephant is still in the room. The wounds, misunderstandings, disappointment, and silence have not been fully resolved.
For me, many relationships are polite, kind, and civil. But they are not whole.
And I am asking genuinely: Does anyone know how to heal this? How to bring our families and communities back together? How to reach love again when it feels just out of reach?
I do not believe separation is our natural state. I do not believe the story ends with distance. But I do believe healing will require humility, grief, truth-telling, and a willingness to love without needing agreement.
Maybe that is where it begins.
