Your Road Next Traveled

Living With Life Never Being the Same Again

A number of years ago, one of my patients was having a terrible time adjusting to the death of her much larger than life father, who BTW was universally loved in the world.

Although she had her own family, she came to see me because she didn’t know how she was going to get through it because of how painful losing her dad was.

Then one day, she came in and calmly proclaimed, “I think I’m better.”

I asked her what she meant and she replied, “What it comes down to is living with life never being the same again.”

I asked her what she meant and she said, “Life never being the same again (without my dad) doesn’t mean that it’s over or that it will even be entirely different. I’ll still be able to laugh, enjoy my family, love and look forward to things. It just will not be the same as it would be if my dad were still alive.”

The eloquence of that statement is just as strong today as it was then.

The relevance of it to the coronavirus crisis is remarkable. It is looking as if life will never be the same again after the coronavirus outbreak is over. But there have been many national and global events from 9/11 to the assassinations of JFK/RFK/MLK to AIDS where afterwards, life was never the same again.

Such events happen frequently in our personal lives. Life is never the same again after you’ve had cancer or a stroke or a bankruptcy or suicide of a loved one, but since they are unavoidable nearly all of us manage to get past those and in some cases, even get over them.

What is something that has happened in your life where life was never the same again, but you were able to move on and past it?

Furthermore – and not trying to sugarcoat a crisis that is still far from over – can you think of such an event, where life actually became better because of it, possibly by giving you an appreciation for something that you completely took for granted or for some other reason?

One such thing for me was dropping out of medical school twice (because of untreated depression), but still graduating. What it did for me was change me from a cynical, sarcastic, rebel without a cause or clue who thought you were foolish if you cared too much about anything into someone who believes that deeply caring about something is the only thing worth living for.

Please share in your comments one of your stories of learning to live with live never being the same again.