We asked our Facebook readers to volunteer to have some “super-honest conversations” about how their lives have been altered in the past year. The story below is part of the second installment of a three-week series.

Stephanie Kritzer tries to stay optimistic, but that was difficult to do at times during the last year after days and days went by without any human interaction.

Kritzer, 64, is used to living alone, but during the last year in isolation there were times where she would go days without using her voice.

“Sometimes when I haven’t talked to someone for a couple of days and I get on the phone I notice my voice. It’s like this whole thing is taking my voice away. My voice is weak because I’m not using it,” Kritzer said.

“I don’t talk to the TV or myself. Those are pet peeves of mine. I can go for a couple of days without talking.”

Going for periods of time without talking or seeing anyone is difficult. It is also something many other Brown County residents who live alone can relate to during this pandemic.

“Then it seems like you can kind of get the mood where there are some dishes in the sink. You think ‘I ought to do those dishes’ then you think ‘Why? Nobody is coming. Nobody is going to be here. They will be there tomorrow,’” Kritzer said.

“Sometimes it’s really hard to get things done. Sometimes it’s just really hard to not get off the couch and not watch TV. … It makes your world really small. It narrows your world.”

A year after the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Brown County, Kritzer still does not go out to eat and has not eaten at a restaurant in at least a year.

“I might stop and pick something up, but I take it home and eat it,” she said.

When news of the pandemic first started going around, Kritzer was “right in the middle” on a low-high scale of 1 to 5 about the pandemic.

“I wasn’t that educated on what it was or what it meant,” she said.

Kritzer was re-elected to the Brown County School Board of Trustees last year. She said the pandemic presented challenges for her campaign, like not being able to set up a booth at the Brown County Fair or talk to voters at the Spring Blossom Parade.

The school board met in-person on March 5 for the last time for months, which was the Thursday before students went on spring break. March 13 was the last day students were in school for the 2019-2020 school year.

“People were talking about should I go on my vacation? Should I not? All of that kind of stuff. I remember that conversation amongst the people that were there. Then we just didn’t open back up again,” she said.

The school board switched to virtual meetings and had a handful of in-person socially distanced meetings when cases were low in the county.

“I think there’s a sense of unity when we’re together. We haven’t been able to experience that,” she said.

The school district went virtual for the remainder of last school year and worked to come up with a remote option this school year for families who wanted to keep their children home due to COVID-19 concerns.

As someone who works closely with the school district, Kritzer said she is worried how spring break travel this year will affect cases in schools.

Kritzer said the leadership in the school district is “forward thinking” though when it comes to responding to the challenges a pandemic brings to educating children. She credits the corporation’s nurse Holly Gordon for an “amazing job” on responding to the pandemic, including tracking exposures to COVID-19 and monitoring cases or symptoms in the schools.

“When you think about Brown County people need to think that we are leading the way, silently maybe in some ways. We’re looking ahead and planning ahead and making decisions for the safety and wellbeing and education of our kids,” she said.

But when the schools closed and more cases were detected in Brown County at the start of the pandemic, Kritzer’s level of concern increased.

“Of course my kids were becoming very educated on it,” she said.

“I stayed home. I just stayed home.”

Kritzer has two adult children, Kaitlyn and Kristopher, who live outside of Brown County. Kritzer has four grandsons with another one on the way. She calls them her own little basketball team.

It was difficult for Kritzer to get out and see her family, especially early on in the pandemic when people were instructed to stay home to avoid spreading the virus.

“They were hunkering in. It was like we had to coordinate who had been where. ‘Have you been out of your house at all? Then I am not coming to see you.’ That kind of thing,” she said.

“It was probably four or six weeks before I saw Kristopher and his family. At least two to three weeks after that I saw Kaitlyn and her family.”

The family members would wait two weeks to see each other if any of them had gone out and been around people.

“I had to make my time out a real good reason for getting out or I wouldn’t get to see my grandkids,” she said.

“We all wear masks, my family. My kids if they have to go out they wear masks. I kind of have boundaries for people who don’t wear masks. I step way back, that kind of thing. I think it’s hard when you run into somebody who doesn’t take it seriously.”

Her daughter would order groceries for Kritzer and have them sent to her house where she would wipe them down before either she came to Brown County to deliver them or Kritzer came to her.

“She did that for me for quite a while and actually still does to a certain level. If I don’t have to go into the grocery to get anything I don’t,” Kritzer said.

Kritzer also found herself shopping more online and locally this last year. Last Easter, she let the Toy Chest in Nashville do her Easter shopping for her.

Kritzer is retired and she said her income was not affected by the pandemic. She said that the federal stimulus checks actually helped her end up with a bit more money in her pocket than usual.

With spending more time at home, Kritzer said she also spent less money on gas for her two vehicles.

“I filled my tanks up and it was like two months before I had to fill them up again,” she said.

The freedom to get in her car to meet someone for dinner or go to a friend’s house affected Kritzer’s mental health along with the isolation a pandemic can bring to someone who lives alone.

Kritzer lives near a relative that she would drop into see every couple of weeks before the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic the two would talk over text, but it was months before she was able to visit with her again.

“That one has been hard. She lives so close and is like my best friend,” Kritzer said.

Kritzer was able to have a get together with her brother in February prior to the pandemic causing everything to shut down, but she was not able to see him for a long time after that, she said.

“That’s a hard one for me not to be able to hop in a car and go down there or meet him or have him come to my house,” she said.

The pandemic also caused her to pause an annual trip with friends.

Kritzer began taking the trip to Mexico with a group of friends in 2018. She went in 2019 for a second time, but had to cancel the 2020 trip.

“I kept coming back to I didn’t believe people should be out there traveling around. I thought people should try to stay home. I need to practice what I preach,” she said.

Kritzer is scheduled to go to Mexico in December this year. She said she hopes she feels safe enough to go by then. Kritzer was set to receive her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine this month.

While spending time at home, Kritzer said she started new routines in the pandemic, like eating oatmeal every morning with pecans. Her daughter likes to bake, so she enjoys escaping to her house to eat the treats she bakes.

When reflecting on what helped her get through this past year, Kritzer said it was picking up the phone to talk with her kids and grandchildren or finding a project to do around her house.

“I think I just find that strength from within,” she said.