Maple Ridge woman reaches out to help other mothers during COVID-19 pandemic

MAPLE RIDGE (NEWS 1130) – Like many other homes affected by the Lower Mainland, parents are being left to deal with children being kept home from school while others grapple with losing their jobs due to the COVID1-19 pandemic.

The Zandbergen household has been busy, with mom Cheryl Zandbergen watching over her two daughters, Kayla and Sienna, whose classes at their local school have been cancelled.

She says it’s been a struggle keeping her children busy and entertained the last month.

“I mean, it’s hard. My husband’s here all day too,” she says. “I got a lot of mouths to feed and my kids are now doing their school activities at home so it’s a lot of balls in the air for sure.”

Cheryl has also had her business put on hold, a business focused on helping moms like her,

‘Moms Gone Wild” was created five years ago after Cheryl poured her life into a vision to help moms live out their dreams and connect through various activities.

But with COVID-19 all the group’s events have been cancelled.

“That for me was hard at first because part of who I am,” she says. “Passion is connecting with people in person and connecting with the community.”

But to keep those ties strong, Cheryl took to Facebook to check in with the roughly 4500 moms that follow her.

“I sort of asked how are you really doing? I don’t want to just hear you’re fine,” she says. “I want to hear like, how are you actually doing? And the responses were overwhelming.”

To help moms address their feelings of uncertainty during the pandemic, Cheryl set up an online interview with a registered clinical counselor who donated her time and it’s now been posted on momsgonewild.ca as much of the talk was centered around anxiety being felt during this very uncertain time.

Tabasom Eblaghie is a counselor and says we’ve already seen the emotional toll the pandemic has taken on so many people.

“As I got older, anxiety was a call to action. It’s like if there were certain things that needed to get done, and weren’t getting done, anxiety would visit me,” Eblaghie says. “So, we saw at the beginning of this pandemic, anxiety visited a whole bunch of people, and we ran out of toilet paper. It’s not rational.”

Zandergergen says she hopes by watching the video, other moms are able to find some comfort.

“I’m hoping that when people watch the video, they think, I can just do this one thing, and it’ll make it this tiny little bit better today.”

Cheryl’s now looking at hosting another online chat with a teacher to help parents better support children at home.