Day 19-Hardship

When we experience hardship of any fashion in life many times we feel like we are all alone. Hardships are not measured in any form, nor is there a scale to weigh them.

A lot of times I will be with a person who is sharing with me and right in the middle of the conversation they will stop and say “I have no right to complain, given what you are going through”. I never know what to say in return. I will tell you how I feel when this happens. It truthfully makes me feel horrible; and that is for many reasons. …I will list but a few

1-    My life should not be a comparison to yours in any way…Hardships are hard no matter what 
2-    Pain is pain regardless from where it stems from

    3-I feel defeated during the conversation as I feel (at times) that acknowledge that my life “appears” to be harder than that of another person ….my internalization is that my own situation is dire in your opinion.

I don’t want to hear that and I also don’t want to be the measure of whether or not your life is good or worse. Sharing is not about allowing another person to walk away from the conversation either feeling better because their own problem is not as big as mine, and nor should a person walk away from a conversation feeling that their own problem is too big… Lord knows I don’t want to spend time with people who inadvertently feel better about their own lives because they just sat with me and feel I am worse of then them…. 

No matter what hardships are just hard. Hardships are hardships and pain is pain period. I CANNOT say that enough!

Each of us have different thresholds of stress, pain, hardship and just because I have weathered a few more storms than you does not mean your threshold is “tolerable”…they are the same no matter how big or small your stress is. You have to accept your hardships and difficulties in life to be in a position to deal effectively with them. You can’t down play how you feel or how you hurt, especially because someone else may have had a harder time or harder life. 

How many times have you yourself tried to help someone who is struggling by saying “well at least you are not like so and so”… or "I lost someone as well, you will get over it". Ok so now you have in a nonchalant but very direct way said “put your big boy pants on and get over it.” Did you mean it to sound that way? Of course not…but you did.

When someone is in a position to share with you how they feel, don’t interrupt them and tell them why they shouldn’t feel that way or shame them for feeling that their cross is too heavy to bare. Do we not do this with our children? “get over it”, “it’s no big deal” “don’t cry” “suck it up” ……  a 5 year old child who lost their favourite blankie…might have as much pain as a 45 year old man who just lost his job…. Who is to say it’s not the same?

We all have hardships that are not the same in nature but the feeling of helplessness is something we all share while experiencing them. So the big question is…”how do you handle or deal with hardship?” The answer to that is different for every situation, however no matter what it is you face you have ‘got’ to face it head on with the same magnitude of strength that the hardship is causing. AND surround yourself with people that will help you get over it ….. or, at least even out the playing field that you are battling on. 

You are not alone in your struggles and should NEVER face things alone. EVER. How do I know this to be true? I have been fighting for a long time alone…..and I have YET to win a battle. You can’t do it alone. Find someone anyone to face your hardship with you.  How many times in your life have you heard someone say to you “OH my God, why didn’t you tell me you were going through that?” “Oh My God I can’t believe you went through that and I didn’t know”…….I have and let me tell you this I don’t feel any better after hearing that…I would have felt better hearing “ok how do WE get through this?”

It’s called finding faith in something, facing your fears then sharing and then comes the really hard part…...healing. Find a support system for you.

Ever hear the expression “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” well how about “what doesn’t kill you eats away at you until you are weak”. That is where I sit; the very insides of me feel like they are being gnawed at all the time. Cancer; pffffft that has nothing on my hardships! In fact some days I look at my cancer as being the icing on my poo poo flour cake. 

Of course I always think of cancer as being another part of me and not a complete part of me…weird, I do not ever think of it as “whole” problem but rather a single problem in my bag of ism’s…besides isn’t cancer just a word anyway… many problems I have faced have been a cancer to me ha in fact I have even met a few people that ARE Cancer. (not nice but true…...at least no names)

What I am trying to get at is this…stop believing that your hardship is too big to share or way too small to matter. It isn’t up to you to decide the weight of its burden! You have the right to feel however you want about your own hardship or pain level. What is NOT allowed is that you carry its weight alone. Hardships are the stories that allow us to be in a position to share with others. And you know what happens when we share…….we find comfort, acceptance and love for ourselves. Sometimes we even learn how to appreciate other people for what they have been through and survived in their life. Food for thought.

~Christine~