This is Hard
What do I mean by hard?
Several years ago, one of my teachers told me not to use the word ‘hard’ to describe my emotions. This ‘teacher’ is a combination therapist-coach-mentor. She is a cherished guide thirty years my senior, and I consider her presence in my life a blessing. To have the generous wisdom of an elder is a gift. What she knows, I do not because she has lived many more years than I have.
I was speaking to her, seeking guidance about parenting during COVID. Everything felt hard. As I shared my struggles, over and over, I used the word hard to describe what I was feeling.
“Try not to use ‘hard’ to describe your feelings,” my teacher invited me over the Zoom screen. “Try to describe what you are actually feeling. Then you can move through it.”
On and off since my teacher shared that wisdom, I have tried to abide by the rule of not lazily putting things into the hard bucket. Inevitably though, the habit has crept back in.
Today, the morning after the election that we painfully lost, when people asked me how I was feeling, I would say something along the lines of, “I’m feeling so many things. This is really hard.”
I spoke to my twenty-year-old daughter for more than an hour this morning. She was incredulous. Outraged. Wrecked. She remembers when it happened eight years…
