Shay Mitchell Gets Real About Mom-Shaming and Self-Quarantining

Working moms across the world are trying to figure out how to manage their kids 24/7, especially homeschooling, and Canadian actress Shay Mitchell is no different.

When her 5-month-old daughter, Atlas Noa, was born in October 2019, the “Pretty Little Liars” star faced heavy criticism after attending a party hosted by Drake shortly after her birth.  On her Instagram stories, in a video that showed her scrolling through the comments, Mitchell joked, “Apparently people are really upset that I left three days after having a kid to go out and party. It wasn’t three days and I left her with Angel, so.”

Now Mitchell, 33, is working from home due to the COVID-19 stay-at-home order and has recently released a travel luggage line despite no one being able to travel at this time. The star claimed that she was doing this in an attempt to maintain some normalcy in this trying time.

Two days after releasing her spring collection, Mitchell announced that her company is leveraging its supply chain to source, manufacture, and donate N95 masks to the healthcare workers on the front lines.

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COMING TO YOU FROM SELF-QUARANTINE…. Hi guys, First and foremost — how is everyone doing out there? It’s strange and uncertain times, and we are doing little else but thinking about how this global pandemic is affecting everyone, and sending our love especially to those suffering from COVID-19 and those on the frontline helping them… I wanted to let everyone that tomorrow morning we are launching the second half of the BÉIS spring collection. Given everything that is going on in the world, we obviously debated whether we should move forward with this product launch as planned. After much thought and conversation, we have decided to proceed. We fully understand that this is an EXTREMELY sensitive time — and even have people on our team personally affected by what is going on — but after conferring internally and with the BÉIS audience we ultimately decided that we wanted to forge ahead with the launch to experience a little bit of normalcy and optimism, even if just for a few days. We worked really hard on this collection, and are excited to share it with you…even in the context of what is happening. It is our sincere hope that in the future there will be a new path for all of us to go down together, and BÉIS wants to be there for that. For all the other small businesses out there, please let’s try to support them as much as we can during this difficult time, in addition to keeping all of health care providers, grocery store workers, delivery drivers and COVID patients top of mind xx Shay

A post shared by Shay Mitchell (@shaymitchell) on Mar 25, 2020 at 12:58am PDT

Fortunately for Mitchell, she has a team helping her with raising her newborn, as well as a team helping her run her business. Other women across the world are not so lucky, but Mitchell assures them that there is no wrong way to be a parent right now.

“I think in a lot of ways this pandemic is bringing out the best in a lot of people … sharing vulnerabilities, offering ways to keep people busy and occupied, connecting with more and more people through this shared experience,” she told Romper. “This situation is obviously different as it’s riddled with uncertainty about what the future holds for us and our kids — what a time to be a new mom, right? But it is giving me pause and time to be grateful.”

With the uncertainty of the coming weeks, it is important to realize that we are all in a state of learning right now. Whether it be learning how to work from home or how to teach our kids long division, we are all doing our best to retain a sense of normalcy, and for that, there is no shame.