Tough Lessons

I was thinking today, as I called my dad and my father-in-law and my eldest called her dad (if you're not a regular reader, you know my youngest didn't because her dad - my second husband - died in 2016). Anyway, I was thinking that - as tough as this time is for us, with the Covidpocalypse and Online Learning sucking for us and all - how we really do have it easy compared to some.

Yes, I know my concerns and problems are valid, too; I've been in therapy long enough to grok that pretty fully. This is not the Traumalympics. But my concerns and problems are usually anxiety and money. We're healthy. We're privileged. We're safe. I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of weeks, and basically, I've learned to chill out about most things. And to follow rather than jumping in to save.

A lot of people don't have this luxury. 

That doesn't make my trauma any less valid, but it does give me some perspective. 

I don't have to worry about my kids getting killed - or even bullied - due to their skin tone or accent or sexuality. Even if we sometimes have trouble with bills, we're not going to starve or become homeless. Although our schools are not perfect, they are light-years ahead of where they were when I was an adolescent in the same district.

Sometimes even the most privileged have their issues - I am so very glad that I am not in charge of making decisions for anything larger than a household, because it's got to be a totally thankless job to be, say, a state governor or a school superintendent right now - but these pale in comparison to the main issues of the day. 

I've written about this sort of thing before. Yes, I have actually said that I agreed with peaceful protests but not rioting and looting (re: Ferguson MO in 2014). I have a whole blog post that essentially says All Cancers Matter. 

But I think (I hope) I understand it better than I did.