The Time We Have: Essays on Pandemic Living

A candid and cathartic exploration of pandemic life, from family to pop culture to healthcare--and beyond

At a time when so many are dealing with collective and personal grief, award-winning author and journalist Michele Weldon’s new collection of essays navigates the revelatory and upending nature of this extraordinary pandemic era through a lens of love and connection. Weldon explores pain and pleasure alike with emotional texture, empathy, wisdom, vulnerability, and humor. She interrogates moments of joy, despair, and triumph, offering readers the possibility for a richly cathartic experience. With honesty and agility, Weldon creates poignant intersections of her narrative with popular culture, history, media, news, consumerism, family traditions, and healthcare. Employing honest and daring language, Weldon examines the concepts of safety, importance of beloved objects, power of words, shift to remote relationships, concepts of feminism, betrayal of public lies, and more. Ultimately, with grace and heart, Weldon offers in these essays useful pathways toward framing this swath of time so that we might arrive at a sense of understanding, belonging, and peace with our new realities.

MICHELE WELDON is a journalist and author of six award-winning nonfiction books and chapters in seven anthologies and is emerita faculty at Northwestern University’s Medill School for Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communication. Her work has appeared in CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, MSNBC, TIME, NBC Think, Slate, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, Narratively, and more. She is a senior leader with The OpEd Project, a TEDx speaker, and a live storyteller.