Life’s Difficulties

“When we are no longer able to change a sit­u­a­tion, we are chal­lenged to change our­selves.” ~ Vik­tor Frankl

It seems sort of irrev­er­ent to write on the topic of “life’s dif­fi­cul­ties,” given the hor­ri­ble tragedy at Sandy Hook ele­men­tary school last week. There isn’t a sin­gle dif­fi­culty that I have expe­ri­enced in my life­time that couldn’t, at its’ root, be fixed. I am obvi­ously grief stricken for all of those involved in the shoot­ing and I, like you, have felt, at times, pretty darn helpless.

So I wanted to try and tackle what we can do to help oth­ers and our­selves with “life’s major dif­fi­cul­ties.” Over the past few days, I have read many arti­cles on this sub­ject and have taken bits and pieces I found to be par­tic­u­larly help­ful and cre­ated an action plan below.

*For the sake of this arti­cle, I have focused my ideas around the death of a loved one, but these sug­ges­tions can be molded and applied to any of life’s major dif­fi­cul­ties.

What I know for sure is that our help­less­ness doesn’t serve us , it doesn’t serve our fam­i­lies or our com­mu­ni­ties and it really doesn’t serve those who need our help the most. We need to be strong and active in our com­pas­sion, care and com­fort, and by doing so we can be of ser­vice to those in need. In turn, by work­ing with these ideas, you make actu­ally find your own road to self-healing.

For Our­selves:

To be of ser­vice, we must come from a place of strength. It’s easy to get cap­ti­vated by the drama of what­ever has unfolded, but, again, that does no good. We need to be vig­i­lant about cul­ti­vat­ing and shar­ing our own light. As they say in the safety instruc­tions on a plane, put on your own air mask first and then you can help others.

• Cul­ti­vate joy in every­day moments. Find small things to be happy about. Make a list, read the list, add to the list, refer to the list when feel­ing of help­less­ness, hope­less­ness, sad­ness or grief seem to over take you.
   
• Express grat­i­tude for every­thing you have. Don’t take what you have for granted. Even if it’s the health and well being of your child. Don’t apol­o­gize for the love you have, cel­e­brate it. A quote by sev­eral sur­vivors of tragedies sim­i­lar to New­town said, “As you honor what you have, you honor what I’ve lost.“
   
• Do not feel guilty about or be afraid to express your joy. Do not think, “If I let my guard down, some­thing bad is bound to hap­pen.” Return­ing to joy after a tragedy can be very scary and make you feel incred­i­bly vul­ner­a­ble. But every time you allow your­self joy, you build that mus­cle of hope. And if that joy becomes more a part of who you are, when bad things hap­pen, and they will hap­pen, you are stronger.
   
• Med­i­tate and Pray. Find time each day to do both. There is such com­fort and heal­ing in the silence of med­i­ta­tion and such power in affir­ma­tive prayer.

For Oth­ers:

When some­one you love is faced with one of life’s major dif­fi­cul­ties, one of the best things you can do for them is to help build a men­tal, emo­tional and phys­i­cal cocoon of sorts; a place where they know they can go to seek com­fort, love, peace and refuge. The cocoon should be “built” by you and should look some­thing like this:

• Uncon­di­tional, non-judgmental love and sup­port as long as they need it, even years later.
   
• Avail­abil­ity: to lis­ten, to run errands, to babysit, to deliver meals, what­ever is needed.
   
• Accep­tance: of their moods, their tears, their anger, their vul­ner­a­bil­ity. You can­not take away their pain, but you can share it and make them feel less alone.
   
• Allowance: of talk­ing about their dif­fi­culty, as much or as lit­tle as they like.
   
• Atten­tion: to every­one effected; hus­bands, wives, chil­dren, broth­ers, sis­ters.
   
• Ask: How are you really doing? Be vul­ner­a­ble enough to let your gen­uine care and con­cern show. Cry with them, hold them, give them per­mis­sion to let it out.
   
• Say that you are sorry.
   
• Extend invi­ta­tions: (and con­tinue to do so) but be wholly under­stand­ing if they don’t accept, or can­cel at the last minute or don’t respond at all.
   
• Take the time: send per­sonal notes or make a dona­tion to a char­ity. Write the dates of the birth and the death on your cal­en­dar and be a vig­i­lant friend on those days.
   
• Offer prayer.

One of the most lov­ing (if not the most lov­ing thing) we can do for some­one in need, is to sim­ply be present with them in their mourn­ing. This can be very, very dif­fi­cult to do, and it can be heal­ing beyond your abil­ity to com­pre­hend it. It is the truest gift you can give someone.

One last piece of advice that I was gifted this morn­ing that I really wanted to include in this piece is about how we can work to pre­vent tragedies like this in the future. Infor­ma­tion is empow­er­ment and I want to share all I have.

Beyond school safety, gun con­trol and deal­ing bet­ter with men­tal health issues in our youth, a friend pointed out to me that par­ents always seem to be the very last to sus­pect any­thing off about their children.

She sug­gested, and I fully agree, that some­thing miss­ing in our soci­ety at large is the idea that we need to cul­ti­vate rela­tion­ships with other adults for our chil­dren. I need to seek out other adults that I know, love and trust and I need to fos­ter rela­tion­ships with them and my chil­dren, so that my chil­dren have an adult to talk with who is not me.

As they grow older, no mat­ter how beau­ti­ful and per­fect I imag­ine my rela­tion­ship with them to be, I am most likely one of the very last peo­ple they will come to if they are hav­ing major prob­lems. If we have cho­sen adults that they know, love and trust, who can be there for them, no ques­tions asked, we stand a bet­ter chance of stop­ping a tragedy before it happens.

My heart, my prayers, my love and light travel with you as you read these words. I extend it out to all those directly effected by the Sandy Hook ele­men­tary school shoot­ings. I hope that in my words, you have found some com­fort, some direc­tion, some hope. We are all in this together.

by Elisa Van Arnam

Elisa Van Arnam is a wife, mother, writer and co-founder of SoulKu; an inspi­ra­tional con­cep­tual card com­pany ded­i­cated to help­ing peo­ple BE THE CHANGE. Elisa is also the co-author of One Namaste a Day, a SoulKu blog­ging adven­ture about see­ing the light in others.

Elisa Van Arnam

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