Metro COVID nurse publishes memoir detailing life on the front lines of the pandemic

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- An east metro mother has a second career she never saw coming. She's now a published author.

Amanda Peterson, an ICU nurse at United, had a front row view to the pandemic.

"Just the severity of what we were seeing was unparalleled to anything I had seen in my 14 years prior," she recalled.

The nurse who was in school to advance her degree was also trying to homeschool her children amidst the pandemic. Through it all, she became a writer.

Peterson started writing social media posts, on her pages in class. A lot of her words were written in the parking ramp of the hospital.

She recalled learning to connect with her children again, saying that overnight, "we had to learn how to be a family and I had to relearn how to be a wife and mother. I had to learn how to clean the house with tiny people un-cleaning it."

At first, she had no intention of publishing her memories.

"All I wanted at the beginning was for it to be something for me to hold. As I got more feedback, healthcare workers, families and just people in general. I realized we all lived this story. When it's something so big and it effects everybody," Peterson recalled.

Her mother challenged her to reach out to a publisher, and it was picked up by Beaver's Pond Press in St. Paul. Now her memoir, "Everybody Just Breathe: A COVID Nurse Memoir of Stamina and Swear Words" is being read by people around the country.

"I felt like it needed to come out of me.  It was a such an important story for so many of us," she said.

"Everybody Just Breathe" is available on Amazon and Kindle.