Slogging On

What do you do when you feel like you're struggling through life up to your knees in mud?  We've all been there, when our older children are in a situation where we are helpless to help them.  Sometimes I think parenting adults (and we still try, regardless of how old our children are) is even more difficult than parenting little ones.  The older our children get, the more helpless we are.  With more life experience we can see that the light heading straight for our offspring is actually an on-coming train, but we have to bite our tongues and wait for the carnage.  Everybody learns their own way, and there is nothing we can do to help except pick up the pieces, apply as much love as they will accept, and move on.  It sucks.

At the same time, many of us are dealing with elderly and frail parents.  The problems that they are facing are as a result of choices that they have made in their lifetime, and we probably had no input about their decisions, but we are faced with the fallout.  It is very painful to see people that we love and once considered a force of nature suffering.  Most often, there is no choice that will make anybody happy.  In the last year of my parents' life I had to separate them and force my father into the hospital and then a nursing home, where he died.  It was the only time they lived apart for close to 60 years and incredibly painful for all of us.  It sucks too.

In a nutshell, that is when I started dying my hair purple.  It made me laugh or smile every time I looked in the mirror, and there was nothing else in my life that could provide that.   It's hard to remember to look after and be kind to yourself when you are facing circumstances that you have no control over.  Having someone you can talk to helps a lot.  So does cutting yourself some slack in other areas of your life.  Exercise (if you can face it) makes you think about something else, and triggers lots of good feelings (pride, endorphins).  Funny books or movies, if you truly find them funny, are great because again laughing takes you out of yourself.  As difficult as it is, sometimes you have to try to detach yourself from the situation, because it is something that you have no control over.  Of course the famous saying is "It's hard to remember your objective was to drain the swamp, when you're up to your ass in alligators".