This Too Shall Pass
I remember vividly, standing over 4-month-old, Charlotte, on her second solid hour of crying with colic, and thought to myself, this was how mothers went crazy. I checked all the boxes and did all the things for her, but still, she persisted. I had nothing to go of off, no experience, nothing, so I didn’t know it would stop, nor did I trust that it ever would. I couldn’t tell you exactly how long this phase lasted, somewhere between 2-3 months; all I know was there was a before, during, and after. I’m confident someone told me it would pass, however within those months, I believed in my heart and my gut, that it could go on like that, forever.
It’s so easy to allow the walls of our mind to collapse inward.
If we let them.
In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t the most difficult, or painful experience. There are varying degrees of human suffering and nothing is more frustrating and less helpful than when someone dismisses a hardship and puts it on a lower shelf. We shouldn’t guess what is considered monumental to others. Regardless of its size, the feelings are real.
As the years progressed and we weathered sleep regressions, eating refusals, tantrums, more sleep regressions, I had gained and relied on one truth: this too, while painful or challenging, is temporary. Sometimes it felt like one tough phase would end, only to begin the next, but we always managed to make it through to the other side. That side, was a wiser place that empowered us with a touch more grit and a lot more gratitude.
Now, here we are—twenty-some-odd days into sheltering in place and some familiar feelings are starting to resurface. We don’t have a concrete timeline, there seems to be more questions than answers. The madness teeters a little too close to the edge for comfort. Fear and worry are so heavy in the air, we could almost paint with the layer that encases us.
We say things like, “I could handle staying home, if I just knew for how long. It’s the not knowing, that’s hard.”
It’s true, an end date would help. But with that out of our control, instead, let’s regard in gratitude all those helpers, out there helping. Perhaps, for now, we can trust in the idea, like all hard things in this life, this too shall pass.