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For Tia Mowry, The Key To Staying Calm During Quarantine Is Changing Her Routine

Photo credit: E! Entertainment
Photo credit: E! Entertainment

From Woman's Day

When actress and wellness entrepreneur Tia Mowry spoke to Woman’s Day during her eighth week of quarantine, she'd just shifted her thoughts about being stuck at home due to COVID-19. At the beginning of quarantine, Mowry said she was feeling highly emotional and experiencing daily ups and downs. But she's stopped judging herself for her fluctuating emotions, and has developed a more steady daily routine to help foster a sense of normalcy.

These days, her routine involves rising early and having some alone time before the rest of her family wakes. "I'll do some sort of cleaning while everyone's upstairs sleeping," she says. "Of course, it gets messed up as soon as they wake up, but it makes me feel better that I got something done." Then she'll workout and check business emails for her wellness brand Anser before the rest of the family trickles downstairs. After family breakfast time, her 8-year-old son Cree begins virtual school, which luckily involves P.E. and recess so her son can work off the restlessness many kids are feeling during this time.

"His teachers have been awesome," she says. "I’ve been hearing a lot of crazy stories about school's going online, but his school has been incredible with the shift."

She plays with her 2-year-old daughter Cairo while Cree is in school, and when she puts Cairo down for a nap around noon, she might take one, too. “My body’s going to be so used to taking a nap around 1 or 2,” she jokes, thinking about going back to work in the future, and feeling lucky that she has the luxury of napping these days.

In addition to the online school for her son and the new nap times, Mowry has implemented some other changes to her household during quarantine. "Usually I'm very strict with the iPad and the games, but now I'm like after school, you can have fun," she said. Her son has been playing games online with his friends from school and his cousins, so she sees it as a way for him to stay connected to his social life.

After family dinner, bath time, and putting the kids to bed around 8, Mowry winds down with her own self-care routine. Sometimes that's taking a bath herself, other days it's relaxing with her husband, Cory Hardrict, or binging TV like her current obsession Westworld. She also experiments in the kitchen. "I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a 'baker,' but during this quarantine, we’ve definitely started baking," she says. Her family bakes each Sunday, and so far they've made the classic quarantine staple of banana bread as well as oatmeal cookies.

But beyond the baking, spending time with family, and counting her blessings, Mowry has made an effort to be thoughtful and empathetic about what people around the country and world are going through during the pandemic. “What we're going through right now is as if we were part of some trauma,” she says. “If you got into a car accident and broke your leg, you would nurture your leg, you would be patient with it. You wouldn't rush into some sort of healing. I shifted my perspective, and have been meditating on that, and it's really helped me have peace and know that this healing is going to take some time.”

For now, Mowry’s healing will involve getting extra cuddles from her kids, running her wellness brand from home, and prepping for the next season of Family Reunion, the Netflix show she stars in. And when the stress of the current situation gets to be overwhelming, she can bunker down and count on her routine, which will begin tomorrow as it began today, up at 6 a.m. to tidy up part of the house that she knows will be messy again by the day’s end.


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