Don’t Let Trouble Consume You…
How to move beyond your private pain (eventually) into a good place.
I had an interesting conversation with my daughter over her having a tough day at work and how others weren’t sensitive to her wants.
Keeping in mind our wants are different from our needs, I’ll dive in.
She suffered a first trimester miscarriage and decided to be public about losing her pregnancy, which I think is good. Why shroud such a loss in shame and secrecy?
But a lot of the ladies at her workplace are pregnant and/or have children at home, while her home still awaits a joyful arrival that may or may not come. These other ladies were talking about how tired they were due to their advanced pregnancies, and then those with kids at home shared how tired they were. All in front of my daughter who has an empty womb.
She wanted the ladies at work to not talk about their pregnancies or children around her, claiming they are insensitive to her feelings of loss and emptiness. I understand, but I pushed back a bit, saying she will have to find a place where she can be okay that others have babies while she does not.
I didn’t mean she had to get to that space immediately. We need to feel our pain and sadness, and that does take time, but at some point we have to loosen our grip on the bad. Our focus needs to change eventually.
Feeling like your body has betrayed you is a humiliating and infuriating experience. I didn’t have the miscarriage, but I cry with my daughter, because I wanted that baby too. I share her hopes. I pray for a healthy pregnancy for her.
How do we celebrate someone else’s happiness when we’re depressed and bereft?
We can’t run around being sad and dopey all the time, or we’ll lose our friends. The mourning must be dealt with in private after the initial pain of our loss. I’m not just addressing miscarriages, but deaths, illness, cancer, bankruptcy and more.
We need to find a place to take our sadness, and the longer we live the more pain we will feel.
Do you have a corner of a room to take your pain? Make a place where you can hide away for a bit, in comfort and in private. Let it out. Journal. Be pissed off, feel mutinous, and expend your negative energy in that place.
Then brush off the bad and walk into the good.
Yeah, it’s going to take practice, but life offers us so many chances at feeling happy for others’ success in spite of our losses. Watching your friend move into a huge home while you’re barely making the payments on a tiny ranch isn’t fun.
Seeing someone’s life untouched by trouble or sorrow is tough when you’re trudging through a valley. I confess I watched a friend’s family who had all sunshine and happiness flood their lives. They had it all. Health. Money. Travel. Success. Popular children.
That friend died of cancer in December. They don’t look so touched by fortune anymore, and I stand ashamed of my…
Jealousy? Is that what we’re feeling? They have money and we don’t. They have a mom when our’s is dead or estranged or strung out on drugs. They have. We don’t.
See? At some point we have to give it up. My daughter may never have a successful pregnancy, though I hope she does, but she can’t avoid people who have children for her whole life, can she?
I know people who do this. They are alone. My friend who had twenty-six miscarriages finally gave up, and her arms are now full of charity work. She’s a happy, positive person. People want to be around her, because she exudes happiness, hope and empathy.
My daughter will face troubles, but I hope she deals with them and celebrates life with good people. Her friends, family, and those she chooses to be in her tribe. Her group.
We choose ultimately. Anger at our fate, or a resignation of the bad while moving forward into the good. Besides, positive things do happen to us, too.
We need to look for the good, because it’s a bit like a starry night. We’ll never feel the wonder of seeing the tiny pricks of light in a velevty midnight sky unless we move off the sofa, head outside and search for it and find it.
Bad lurks around us. Yes. But lean into the positive.
This takes time and practice, but we’ll get there because we are students in life.
