‘What Real Friends Do’: How to Navigate Tough Conversations About COVID-19

A ‘Stay Home’ sign is taped to a driver’s vehicle as she passes Christmas lights during a car caravan of nurses calling for people to remain home amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in El Paso on November 16, 2020.

Mario Tama / Getty Images

As it gets colder, and harder to gather outdoors, some of Kenzie Billings’ conversations with her loved ones are feeling a bit more fraught.

“It’s felt frustrating at times. You know, you can feel energy from people in terms of wanting to be together,” the 29-year-old from Portland, Ore., says.

Her sister, who is pregnant, has been taking social distancing rules very seriously, she says, but others in the family are more eager to get together indoors. And she has found it especially hard to navigate these negotiations without being face-to-face.