Everything Is Hard

When I was seventeen, I left home for the first time for six months. It was unequivocally the best decision for me at the time. Home seemed hard, which in retrospect was not hard at all. I probably made it a lot harder than it should have been. Now that I’ve parented six teens, I’ve realized that the actual job of teenagers is to make their life hard, and everyone around them sometimes. You cannot grow if everything stays status quo and growing means stretching in one way or another.

In 2001 I married into hard and stayed for 16 very hard years. Years when all the things were”my fault.” Being a married single parent with 3 then 4-5-6 children was also difficult but I did it. 

Last year I sent my daughter away to the Naval Academy. I was sure I hadn’t done anything as tortuous or difficult. I was an absolute wreck. Then one of my sons died. I’m not sure how to even quantify “hard” in this scenario that I’m living through. It’s been just shy of 9 months since his passing and I feel like I’m just now able to poke my head above the water. 

I was talking to a friend recently and joked that adult life is just one scenario after another of”getting over the hard stuff.” Dog eats the blinds, “get over it.” The job is horrible, “get over it.” As adults, we have to learn to roll with the punches; if we don’t, it becomes exponentially more difficult. 

There are however some things you can’t “get over.” I will never be over my son’s death. I will never be over the circumstances that led to it. What I can do is be in control of myself and how I move forward. I’m not sure what that looks like yet. In the past, I’ve kept myself busy to distract myself from feeling things. I was busy anyway with kids so it didn’t take much. Like many moms,I think I practically lived in the car taking kids all the places.

I’m entering a new phase of empty nesting. My youngest is 15, so I still have a few years, but even now, I have more “free time” than I have had since my 20s. It’s surprisingly difficult to navigate. I often find myself alone and unsure of what to do and end up feeling frozen in inaction. I’ve thought about volunteering, but I keep feeling the pull to remain still. After carrying so much for so long, I’m learning to embrace the difficulty of being in this stillness instead of rushing to fill it with distractions or escape it.

As I navigate this transition, I’m discovering that it’s okay to sit with my feelings of uncertainty and rest in this moment of stillness. It’s a time for reflection and self-discovery, allowing me to reconnect with who I am outside of my role as a parent. While it’s challenging and things will still be hard, I’m beginning to appreciate the opportunity to explore new interests and possibilities at my own pace. Embracing this new chapter, I trust that clarity and purpose will come in their own time.