When we are going through a trying period of our lives, we often long for the time when' things will get better'.  Those of us who have been through some of life's ups and downs realize that often things don't get better as much as they just become different.

In this perceptive essay, our member, Cara Holman, shares her experience with this phenomenon. 

It seems like a lifetime ago that I met Marilyn, my oldest child’s first preschool teacher. Marilyn was a wise woman, of around 50 years old, give or take a few years in either direction. She had a large family, composed of four or five children I believe, most of whom were in their teens, and a mother or mother-in-law who lived with them, and was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

She inhabited a world I could barely comprehend at the time. I was still in my twenties, and midlife, teenagers and aging parents loomed far in my future. Yet Marilyn became my mentor, someone whom I truly admired and respected, and whose wide experience of life helped me put my own troubles in perspective. She was always calm, and seemed to face life with philosophical acceptance.

“Marilyn,” I asked her one day, after a particularly challenging week, “When does it get easier?” My son had recently turned one and I was still overwhelmed with the demands of being at the beck and call of a tiny pre-verbal person, who depended on me 24/7 for his every need.

Marilyn merely looked at me and smiled in a knowing way. “It doesn’t really get easier or harder,” she gently replied, “Just different.”

Now from a vantage point of more than two decades later, I can finally fully appreciate what she was trying to tell me. She wasn’t really equivocating. Some things get more difficult, and some things get easier, as time goes on. The balance shifts, new concerns replace old ones, and life marches on, but who’s to say whether or not the “new normal” is an improvement over the old status quo? Certainly not me.

In those twenty plus years, I’ve added two more children to my family. I traded a career in high-tech for the life of a stay-at-home mom, and volunteer extraordinaire. From cutting out construction paper letters to chairing Site Councils, I’ve done it all. My toddlers became teenagers, and now two of them have morphed into full-fledged adults, making their own way in this world. I wonder sometimes whether I’ve taught them enough, before I have to remind myself to stand back and let them make their own decisions, and yes, probably a few of their own mistakes in there as well. Didn’t we all go through that at one point?

I will admit though, that there are days when I look back nostalgically to the time when my biggest concern with my children was whether or not they slept through the night, and trying to decide when the proper time to wean them was. At least then, I knew I could keep them safe. Those were the days when I still had my own parents to turn to. Dad could always make me believe that everything would be all right, no matter what, and mom knew the answer to absolutely everything. I know that while time will lessen the pain of losing my parents, it will never completely disappear.

But was the past really easier? I suspect not. In my twenties and thirties, I was still going through the inner turmoil of discovering who I was in this world, and trying to balance the demands of being a parent with being a person in my own right. It took many years, and a number of changes in direction before I finally “got it”, and learned to understand my motivations and needs, and as a consequence, set my own priorities in life. I’ve been forced to face many difficult challenges over the years, including a cancer diagnosis. While I would give the cancer back, and gladly, what I would never give up are the hard-won life lessons I took from my experience.

I have lost the sense of security that I once had, the belief that my world could not be shaken, and bad things only happened to other people, but in its place, I have learned to be resilient and to face trouble head-on. Along the way, I have acquired a new zest and appreciation for life, and the wisdom to take one day at a time and not take anything for granted.

I think back often to Marilyn’s words, as well as to the words of my favorite Joni Mitchell song: “Something's lost but something's gained in living every day”, and now, when some of my younger friends ask me, “When does it get easier?” I can smile and answer unequivocally: “It doesn’t really get easier or harder. Just different.”
 

Cara Holman lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and the youngest of her three children. A mathematician by training, she began writing again after a brush with breast cancer two years ago led her to join a therapeutic writing group for cancer survivors. Several of her pieces have appeared in Along the Journey, Volumes I and II put out by this group.  

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