You know what?
Life is hard.
Sometimes the hard is so unrelenting and the pockets of joy are so few and far between and their relief so temporary that it feels like the hard is what life is now.
When my kids were teeny tiny and I was in the trenches of toddler hard, many a mother told me: “it get’s easier.”
Maybe that’s a party line we tell ourselves in order to keep trucking along but I told my husband that- officially- I don’t think life is going to get any easier. I think it is just going to keep finding new ways to be hard.
At least that’s what its track record suggests.
And I swear if one more well intentioned person tries to offer me a badge of resilience I may lose my ish.
I think I am discovering that life lessons and silver linings are best reserved for the moments when we have the capacity and safety to drop our shoulders, release the breath we have been gathering deep in our chest, and reflect on said hard.
When you are in the trenches, I think what might help more than “you got this” cheerleading and “this too shall pass” mantras is the acknowledgement that your hard does in fact- suck.
Several years ago, I read a bit of advice from- I think another writer- and it said, “write from your scars not your wounds.”
I guess the processing of pain is better suited for offline diaries than online forums so I promise not to bleed all over your feed. However, I do want to offer a white flag to anyone else going through a seemingly infinite season of hard.
You’re not crazy.
You’re not over dramatic.
You’re not weak or incapable.
You’re not making mountains out of molehills.
This.is.hard.
But I think when we are overwhelmed by the depths of whatever valleys we are facing, it is even more prudent to look for the pockets of joy-and when we find them- their impact will be even more powerful.
Case in point.
My not so little-little-ones crawled into bed with us the other night and in the midst of my default setting to fully lean into the annoyance and frustration over the lack of space that left for quality sleep (because lack of quality sleep makes everything harder) I had a fleeting thought that I grasped onto for dear life.
I thought that while so much is out of my control, the simple act of laying in between mom and dad offers my babies a feeling of safety and in a world that feels beyond unsafe I felt a twinge of joy that snuggling close fills their safety meter just enough that they can then face the big, bad, but if we look hard enough beautiful world and ripple out their own pockets of joy to other bleeding hearts.
That is not to say we ignore whatever is challenging us or that we are engaging in “toxic positivity.”
It’s just to say that in order to keep ourselves from sinking back into perpetual darkness we have to intentionally refuel with whatever light crosses our path. And sometimes that light is disguised as more darkness so we have to realllllly look for it.
And choose it.
It might be tough right now, but so are we. Keep going friends. I believe in my bones we’ll be glad we did. ❤️🩹
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