What I Want to Teach My Children About Facing Terrible Situations

(Navigating Suffering, Divorce, and Resilience)

I’m Haley. Book midwife (editor), author, and single mom of four. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my family and gain access to exclusive content:

My teenage son was very worried about me when my marriage suddenly ended.

I remember telling him the day his father moved out, “We are going to be okay. We’re not okay today. And we won’t be okay tomorrow. But we will be okay.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” he answered. “You loved dad so much. You were best friends. I don’t know that you’ll be okay.”

A couple of weeks ago he told me, “Mom, I thought that when everything happened last summer that you’d stay in bed for a month. And then…the next morning you just jumped out of bed like Grandpa Joe from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And you’ve just lived your life. I guess I believe you now that we’re going to be okay. We are okay. We’re better than we were before.”

We all will experience suffering. I’ve been terrified of suffering my entire life. And we can’t stop it or control its arrival in our lives. But do have control over how we respond to it. How we let it shape us. I want to teach my kids to suffer well. I want to show them what that looks like.

Of course, suffering might keep us in bed for a month. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I certainly have my moments curled up in fetal position sobbing my little broken heart out.