Growing Up is Hard To Do

This past week I was visiting my brother and his fiancee. The conversation somehow came around to the topic of how things were when my parents divorced. I was around 13 years old, and he was about 7 and he took it really hard. So did everyone involved, just in different ways. He doesn't remember a lot and he asked me what I remembered, since I was older at the time.

We spent over an hour talking about family, and growing up, our parents, our own struggles, and theirs, etc. Having spent some time in the last year or so rereading my own journal from that time, and one of my mom's from the year she was pregnant with him, I recalled difficult feelings I had, and challenges my parents faced just being adults/spouses/parents. I read, with some pain and sadness, the attempt at expression of my insecurities and my worried, confused feelings.

I think in any child's life there is likely to be an experience that is difficult to process. One that causes emotions that the child is unfamiliar with, or that are too strong to know how to deal with. I think many children have experiences that break their heart, or cause them to grow up faster than they might have otherwise. These memories brought up those feelings for me.

As I've thought about my conversation with my brother for the last few days I've pondered on the realization that growing up is hard to do. It entails all kinds of challenges like trying to understand the world and the people around you, learning life lessons, making mistakes, betrayal of friends, hurt feelings, searches for identity and beliefs, having people in your life do things you don't have any control over, watching people you love go through hurt, and all kinds of having child emotions in a grown up world. It can be hard to be a child in a grown up world. Heck, it can be hard to be a grown up in a grown up world!

My conversation with my brother ended up in a marvel that, looking back, in most cases we wouldn't change or trade the difficulties we experienced growing up because of the lessons in them. We can see now things we gained, skills we honed, discoveries made that have become part of who we are, that we would perhaps not have had otherwise. Hindsight can be 20/20, and you can come to a place where you realize that you are grateful for your challenges. (Speaking specifically of parents, we realize too that we have a completely different perspective on our parents than we did as children. It's much easier to understand/forgive/appreciate them).

Today my kids are 7 & 4. I see them trying to make their way in their world. I see them trying to learn how to have friendships, and work through the hurts that social connections inevitably bring. I see them trying to process feelings of life not being fair, (and that's often connected to me and consequences I impose etc.). As many times as I want to complain to them about how easy they have it as kids, compared to how tough it is to be the grown up, I want to keep in mind that growing up is hard to do. I want to treat them gently, because they will go through their own growing pains as well. It's all part of each person's journey. I want to remember.