The Guide to Parenting

Grace Under Stress  

Have you ever had a stressful experience with someone that brought the two of you closer together? I had a friend that I wasn’t particularly close to quickly turn into a close relationship because we went through a hard experience together. Our friend group was slowly starting to change, instead of doing things together, people started making group chats, excluding other friends and excluding Haylie (the name of my friend) and I from hang outs because they were doing things that Haylie and I weren't comfortable doing. At first, we didn’t realize that we were slowly getting cut out of the group until we noticed we weren't catching inside jokes or getting out of conversation circles.  

Haylie and I tried to get into what our friends were doing but our friends would jab hurtful comments at us and “forget” to tell us about events. Hurt, Haylie and I would confide in each other about how these situations made us feel and how we didn’t feel like anyone liked us. We both found comfort in knowing that someone else felt unwanted and not noticed and we quickly became better friends. Haylie and I stuck together in time when we really needed someone to rely on and even though we don’t even live in the same state anymore I know I can always go to her when I'm feeling misunderstood or sad. Both of us ended up finding better friends and looking back we are both grateful that we stopped hanging out with those friends. 

Always having highs in a relationship can be more damaging than helpful because you never get to see what the person is like under stress. When we are going through a difficult situation that’s when we really show who we are. And when someone else is going through the same thing the shared trauma of an event bonds you quicker than Elmers Glue. Haylie and I went through a stressful situation together and it made us feel less alone, and we gained a stronger relationship because of it. 

When a family faces a trial like a parent being gone more often because of a job, a family member passing away or fighting in the family unit, they family can respond in a variety of ways. They can bounce back to where they were before the trial, become even better than they were before the trial, be worse off than they were before, or they can fizzle out completely. Sometimes a challenge comes along, and we wonder “Why does this have to happen to me and my family?” or “How can anything good come out of a situation like this?” Just like the situation that I talked about earlier, a family can grow closer together the same way. We can recognize that we are not the only ones with emotions of sadness or anxiety because our family members are going through the same thing and most likely feel very similar to you.  

Friends or cousins who don’t have divorced parents don’t understand the difficulties of growing up with divorced parents. It can feel lonely when experiences like going to a different house on the weekends, hearing hushed conversations about how terrible your other parent is and having to have separate parties for your family because your parents don’t want to run into each other are experiences you can't relate too with friends. I'm grateful that I had siblings who understood what it felt like to do the exact same thing that I was. Me and my siblings are very close I know that I can go to them when I'm frustrated with parent situations or life giving you lemons and they can have empathy for me. When we let the stresses in life bond us to our families, we can come out stronger than we were before. I believe that hard things come our way, because change never happens when life is always easy.