She says life is sometimes like child birth

She moved back to a small town outside of Montreal last winter to be closer to her large family. If I were to list the challenges, struggles and even the worst kind of tragedy that could touch one person’s life in an extremely short period of time, you wouldn’t believe me. Thing is she’s so much more than just alive, she’s living and fighting and reaching for moments of joy. From the moment she opened to door to welcome us this weekend, I was in awe.

Friday night after the kids went to bed we sat across from each other at her dining table, glass of red wine in our hands and we caught up on the last several years. She told me the story of being in labor with her second child, how the break between contractions gave her just enough time to recharge for the pain. She remembered laboring alone in the dark, meditating between the contractions and knew then that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The struggle was taking her to a beautiful outcome.

This is how she explained she’s made it through her last year. Every so often she gets a wave of pain and struggles with her circumstance. But she gets enough time between her pain to recharge and find gratitude for the gift of her children and the people she loves. She knows that after this immense struggle she’s going to come out a more compassionate and grateful human being.

We spent hours talking about our experiences and how they’ve molded us, about our fears and struggles and what we’ve learned. She wasn’t afraid to reach out to people she loves and share her pain and ask for help. Her family completely stepped up and has been there for her. She fights for the ability to feel gratitude and she works hard at healing herself. She’s making it through her hardship because she works hard to feel better and wants to genuinely learn and grow from her hardship. She’s also not afraid to look at her pain, let it be in the room with her and she doesn’t put on a face. She’s authentic.

I’m writing this while sitting on the train, my soon to be seven year old beside me. I know life isn’t always going to be easy for her. My weekend away reminds me that one of the most important things we should do as parents is to show our kids, through our own behaviour and language, how to deal with struggle, pain, disappointment and heart ache.

We can either teach them that pain softens us or hardens us, makes us more compassionate or more angry and outwardly focused on others’ shortcomings. Thank you to my beautiful friend. Despite thinking our visit was really about being a good friend to her, I needed to be around her fill my heart and renew my inspiration to fight for beauty in life.