Monday, January 13: Resilience

Today I am grateful for my own resilience. Some days it is really hard to be the only one upon whose shoulders all of the responsibility lies in this house. Paying all of the bills, making all of the decisions. There are days when you feel like you can't possibly roll with another punch, field another $200 water bill, or another dentist bill or another call from the school. But over the years I have also come to see how lucky I am. Yes, there are times when I wish I wasn't alone in all of the decision making, but often I have been grateful that I don't have to cave to someone else's opinion on rules for my daughter, or fight with anyone else on whether or not to let her dye her hair again or get a nose ring. It was always up to me. I have wonderfully supportive friends and family I could always talk to when there were problems and often I would implement their advice (with my own twist of course), but in the end the final decision was mine. I see so many couples fight over these issues, and from past relationship experience I have learned that for me things are not necessarily improved when sharing stresses and fears. I tend to want to relieve my partner's burdens so if we are both worried about money, that stress is magnified for me by also worry about the effect it is having on my partner, not just my own normal worry. Thank goodness I am resilient! Even though sometimes it feels like I couldn't possibly handle one more thing, I do. Even if sometimes that means retreating into my home life, or becoming a little bit more short-tempered. And lately I just keep reasoning out that I always make it through somehow, so I know that I will still be standing tomorrow.