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Getting Through Stressful Times

I worry about my daughter who is still in the states. She is there for vacation and some thesis research. It’s natural for a mom to worry especially if she finds out that her daughter’s housing is unpredictable and her money resources are slowly dwindling off. I keep telling her to move to my sister’s place in the suburbs of San Francisco but all she says is I have to learn to start living in the real world.

Yes, she is right. She is an adult and needs to learn to solve her dilemma.

Being the protective mother, I can’t help feeling disappointed that her original housing plan did not materialize. I feel like calling my bitch powers and spew out a tirade of tongue-lashing at the person causing her discomfort and misery. I check myself and remember that my daughter is not a little child. She is not the little girl that I use to place a band-aid on her knee. She can fight her battles. . The ““band-aid” she needs is just within her reach.

It really bugged me that things didn’t work out as planned.

Things sometimes never go as planned and this surely brings stressful times to us. I am sure my daughter feels stressed about her living conditions. Hard times are not all there is to life but they are part of life, growth and moving forward.

What she does with her challenging situation is her choice.

Like most of us, we too get into a bind. We can use the energy of hard times to work things out. We can use it to fine-tune our skills and our spirituality. Or we can go through these stressful situations suffering, storing up bitterness and refusing to grow or change.

Hard times can motivate us to bring out our best. We can use these times to move forward and upward to higher living, loving and growth. The choice is really ours to make.

Will we say “Life sucks. Nothing ever good comes out of this…”? Will we ask our God what we’re supposed to learn from this experience?

Hard times don’t have to be there for us so we can be motivated to grow and change. But if it is there, we can learn to channel it into growth and use it for achieving what’s good in life.

Sometimes I wished I extended my vacation to match with my daughter’s trip back home. I wanted to be there for her. I felt she needed my motherly hug and comfort that “things will turn out fine. You will be fine”.

Yet, I believed things happen for a reason. There is a silver lining to all of this.

How do you handle stressful times?

8 thoughts on “Getting Through Stressful Times”

  1. my sister left my mom’s home at the age of 17, i’m much older when i left, i was 22 when i did. both of us didn’t grow up with our mom because we were living with our dad in the philippines. it’s nice to know that sometimes she worries about us, it’s nice to feel loved. and our mom is nice enough to let us out into the world knowing that she’ll be worried sick about us.

    as a mom now, i think it’s our job to prepare our kids for the real world. it won’t be easy, but parent’s won’t live forever. good thing my son is only 6, i have, maybe 12 more years to go before he begs me to send him off to a far away university so he can live his own life.

    i believe you raised your daughter very well, she’s now a confident and strong woman facing the unknown of a foreign land.

    issais last blog post..Beware of the White Rabbit

    1. Right after I wrote this, I called her up and I was relieved to know she resolved some of her challenges. Though she kept saying she can handle it, I was surprised that she was actually glad to hear my voice.

  2. A mom will always be a mom, no matter how grown up your daughter feels, I know you will always see her the way you did when you first held her in your arms after giving birth. But don’t we all have our own wings to spread so that we can fly and experience the beauty of life, the more pain we experience, the harder our wings will be. Thank you for this wonderful post I enjoyed reading it.

    yolynnes last blog post..SOMEBODY SAVE MATABUNGKAY!

  3. I am a protective mom, too. I grew up with an overprotective mom. With our kids grown up and the times a lot different than when we were at their age, we need to be more effective in “balancing”. What a tough task it is to balance between letting go (giving our kids the personal freedom they need to grow) and watching over them (not because we don’t trust them but because we want them to be happy and safe wherever they are).

    Know what, my mom still worries about us when my siblings and I are overseas. She always thought about us (in the Phils) when she was living in the US as a citizen; we just had to ask her to come back and stay so that she’ll stop worrying. I think this is one of the natural predispositions we’ve been given as moms.

    Do you notice your husband worrying as you do? Mines can still sleep soundly even when my 2 kids are still out at wee hours in the morning and rarely bothers to check if the kids arrived at all:)

    Thanks for always sharing your thoughts Noemi:)

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