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The People You Meet in 2023

We're finding each other in the wild now

by Jenny Hart from Is This Real Life?

The last three years have been a mind trip. It’s weird to think that in January of 2020, we were only really starting to hear about the weird virus that was spreading in China. It had hit the mainstream news, and I even noticed some friends on Facebook who asked hesitant questions about making travel plans.

I’d heard about it months earlier, because Justin. He told me the death rates being reported were alarming, and we might even have another Spanish Flu situation on our hands. That was 2019. Some time around February 2020, it was clear that the novel coronavirus primarily affected the old and the infirm. 

Justin & Jenny Hart

Justin was just over a year recovered from almost dying from multiple lung problems, so heck yeah, we paid attention to a respiratory virus that was beginning to sweep the world. We paid attention as it moved from China to Italy, and then faster than you could snap your fingers — everywhere.

We were in Costco in line to buy toilet paper on Friday, March 13 (of course it was Friday the 13th) when we heard that our school district was shutting down for four weeks. 

We had no idea how we were going to make it four weeks home with all four kids.

But it was fine — they were shutting down the schools, but there was no reason the kids couldn’t hang out with their friends. We thought closing the schools was insanely stupid the moment they started talking about it, but the government is stupid. Surely our friends weren’t stupid. Maybe it would even be a nice break for them!

We were SHOCKED when our kids’ friends' parents wouldn’t let them be normal kids. 

My daughter turned 12 in March of 2020, and two friends came and decorated our door with birthday wishes (taking turns, standing six feet apart) and brought a basket of birthday goodies. They were there with their parents, and stepped back into the street after ringing the doorbell.

We all stood in our family units outside, and it was clear the three girls wanted to hug and play and be kids. “Don’t touch!” the other parents scolded them, and I just didn’t know what to say. 

Justin did though. He told them the kids were fine, that the hysteria was overhyped, and it was unlikely that our children had anything to worry about. He’d already been publishing articles on it — the first was on March 9, 2020, and was titled How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coronavirus.

The other parents said a phrase that I’ve come to loathe: Better safe than sorry.

But these were people I cared about, and their children were my daughter’s best friends. In those days, I still hoped it would all blow over soon, and I didn’t want to confront them strongly. Plus they had just done a very kind thing for my daughter! I didn’t want to ruin the tiny bit of friendship magic she got on her very lonely birthday.

If I knew then what I know now …

Later that night, I cried. Justin told me they were scared. And he promised that he was going to do everything he could to arm people with truth and data so that they wouldn’t have to be so scared. 

Nearly three years after that front door birthday, I went to bible study this morning. I joined a group this past fall that hadn’t met in person in 30 months. 30 months with no fellowshipping with other believing women. No praying together, no laying on of hands, no eye contact, no place for small children to go have fun with loving volunteers while their mamas got two hours of adult contact.

Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Of all the things that I’m mad about, it’s hardest for me not to be mad at the churches that closed. But this hasn’t been my first rodeo with church-hurt, and I love Jesus, so off I went. 

I found a wonderful group of women and after that first meeting, I thanked God that not a single one of them was wearing a mask. But I didn’t bring up covid with them. I wasn’t there to talk about covid anyway. I was there to talk about Moses leading God’s people through the wilderness after the Exodus. What a fitting topic for the present time. 

I figured that the only way to regain any sense of normalcy in my life would have to be to forgive the people I could forgive, and when I met new ones, adopt the philosophy that ignorance is bliss. I don’t WANT to know if they have seven boosters or think Fauci is the second coming. I just want to enjoy normal life again, even though I feel emotionally battered after being on the frontlines of the war on covid policies that destroyed normality for years. 

I really don’t need to know if the woman sitting next to me in bible study was Team Reality or Team Apocalypse last year. She’s here now, and that’s all that matters.

This morning we were wrapping up our small group session, and two women next to me were chatting. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I was sitting right there. One of them has an ill father, and the other was comforting her. The first woman said, “I just can’t help but wonder if it’s the vaccine … he’s had a booster.”

My head snapped up, and they noticed me. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” I said. 

“Oh, we weren’t being quiet anyway. My dad is sick, and I’ve just been hearing a lot of people getting sick lately who have been boosted.”

I had no idea how these women really felt about things, so I tread lightly. “I definitely have opinions on covid vaccines.” Ok, in my head at the time, it sounded subtle. 

“What are they?” one of them asked me.

“Well, I think they’re a terrible idea for young people.”

“Are you a nurse?” they asked.

“No … but I’m … knowledgeable.”

The woman with the sick father took the risk: “My healthy 75-year-old father was just diagnosed with ALS, and I can’t help but wonder now if it was the vaccines.”

“I have a close friend who died this past fall from an extremely aggressive form of cancer and I can’t help but wonder if it was the vaccines,” I responded.

The other woman said, “You’re one of us.”

“My husband wrote a book called Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane.”

They wanted to know more, and we chatted and it turns out these lovely women are completely horrified at what covid hysteria has done to our world. One of them is a grandmother and confided that she’s worried about the world her grandchildren are growing up in. 

She also told me that she sees hope in mothers. Her daughter-in-law was a liberal progressive three years ago, and now identifies as libertarian, a decision made after the people she used to claim as her own came for her children. I told her I have many, many mom friends just like her daughter-in-law, and I adore them and their courage in standing up for our kids.

I never expected this exchange today. I would’ve been happy going to bible study the entire year without covid being brought up once. But oh how it bolstered my soul to know that there are others. There are people like me, traumatized from lost friendships, lost businesses, lost years, just trying to put one foot in front of the other and get on with life.

We are finding each other in real life now, not just on Twitter or at rallies. And it’s such a relief to hear another human being say, “I am absolutely devastated by what the government and the media and big pharma have done to us.”

Because it was devastating. It’s still devastating. But there is comfort in finding new friends, and strength in numbers. Why do you think they were so determined to keep us separated for years? 

If I knew then what I know now … well, I know it now. And so do a LOT of other people. Finding a couple of them on a random Thursday morning in January 2023 made my heart so happy today.

Life is moving forward, and there are people out there ready to make sure this never happens again. I hope I meet them all.