Maybe it has been a while since your divorce or separation or some other major life-altering experience? You may have spent a lot of time, effort, and personal work getting your life on track and, on the whole, you are feeling pretty darn good about where your life is as a single parent taking care of a family. Even those of us who feel basically happy and in control of our lives can still experience bad days. It can be a little scary and if you have weathered a particularly depressing or challenging time, a bad day dip might make you feel fearful that you will fall back into that place. It could just be one bad day, however…
It always seems to catch me off guard, even as old as I am–I will be humming along, doing just fine meeting all my obligations and managing my little world and then one day things will just be off–I might feel crabby, or tired, or weepy and even a bit blue; I might feel very much like I have felt when I was going through much tougher times and it can be a little scary. While I know in my head that I cannot avoid life’s natural hardships and cycles, I would rather not have bad weeks and bad years. Recovering from a divorce or separation or a partner’s death can take a long time and many of us will never forget how tough and painful those weeks, months, or years were. A bad day can be a bit of a trigger.
It helps me to remind myself that it is only temporary, a “dip” and that everyone has bad days once in a while. The important thing is to try to keep it in perspective and use some of the skills that I have learned from my experiences–self-care, patience and compassion, how to laugh and let go–just reminding myself that I will get through a bad day just as I have gotten through so many before can be all I need to keep from worrying that it is anything more than an “ordinary” bad day.
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