First off, let me thank you for hanging in with me over the past several weeks. I took a little unexpected hiatus from my blog due to a crazy four weeks that felt more like four months. May this re-entry post help you should life get tougher than usual.
So…have you ever been hit with a storm of stress, bad luck or hard times? I don’t mean just one or two stressors, I mean a string of them. Well, that has been my entry into 2015. Now let me say that I’m aware of how truly fortunate I am to not have had to deal with events like the death of a child or my own cancer or a debilitating illness of my husband or children. I’m also so very aware that things can always be worse and that I am blessed in so many ways.
That said…our family was hit with what seemed like a tsunami of back-to-back stressors. I share these as a reference point, certainly not to in anyway imply that I’ve had it harder than others. I absolutely know that others have it harder and would love to hear what you’ve learned from your journey!
Our 4-6 week journey:
• On a Sunday, a very close family member (JoJo) went into hospice unexpectedly.
• The following Wednesday, my husband was robbed at gun point in a city hundreds of miles away from home (the saga stemming from that one event is a story in itself, but, thankfully, he is okay).
• On the next Wednesday, while visiting JoJo in hospice, my mother-in law fell ill, had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital and was admitted to the Cardiac ICU.
• During the four days she was there, my husband’s uncle passed away.
• These events all happened as my husband and I were working our butts off to pack and ready our house for a move to a new home the following week.
• On moving day, a Friday, as the movers are carrying boxes out the door, I get a call from my sister telling me my mother has had a heart attack.
• We complete our move that day and I fly to Florida the next day..
• In the next few days, my husband discovers that our new home is leaking all over from ice damns…and he works like a dog to reduce the damage.
• On the next Wednesday, my mom goes in for open-heart surgery.
• While my mom is in surgery, I get a call informing me that JoJo has just passed away.
• My mom gets out of surgery and is on the road to recovery, but my mother-in-law is re-admitted to the hospital.
• Both mothers begin to heal. I fly home.
• Two hours after arriving home, my sister calls to inform me that our brother has been taken into emergency surgery for a detached retina (surgery went well and he is on the mend).
• Whew…and now I no longer answer my phone …LOL
I decided to write this post for those of you who get hit with your own tsunami. I hope what I have learned may help you.
Part I of what I learned:
1. Find the humor: Our family loves to laugh and I have to say that finding ways to laugh totally made the tough times more tolerable. Just the timing of all the events became a source of many laughs after we got past the initial shock of the next “thing.”
2. Stay in the present: This became one of my little mantras. It seemed as if our life was becoming a domino game of bad events and I started to worry about what next shoe was going to drop. I had to stop imagining things getting worse or going through a thousand “what if” scenarios and instead just handle what was right in front of me. “Stay in the present, Lisa” helped ground me on many occasions—especially the five hours in the waiting room while my mom was going through surgery.
3. Focus on only one thing at a time: Thinking of all the events at the same time proved to be too much and led to me thinking that life was out to get me. I had to simply focus on one event at a time and not go to that “woe is me” place.
4. Take turns: I’m blessed to have an awesome husband, however he was getting slammed, too. One week his family was struggling and the next week mine was. We had to both take turns giving and receiving support. Somehow we both knew that we couldn’t falter at the same time. Not having to shoulder all the burden helped, while also having to be strong enough to help someone else (including our kids), grounded us in the importance of “keeping it together.”
Challenge: Tune in next week for part two of the lessons I learned . In the meantime, if life is throwing you a lot of stressors, my heart goes out to you. Know that you can handle it and try some of the tips above.