Getting Better??

[AntoniaB]

It has helped me to think that often there are other equally difficult trials people go through that have nothing to do with marriage or infidelity but have to do with other things entirely that create the same feelings of "this is only happening to me" or "I'm alone in this journey."

Generally when I get caught up in feeling alone I try to imagine that in a room full of others that I can never really know what kind of nightmares other people are facing, and my empathy for their suffering, whatever it might be, helps me see that I have to, like Beatrice says, GIVE peace, love, and happiness.

There is a woman in my mediation group who is happily married--and yet her mother is dying slowly, and her mother is incredibly mean to her on top of it. I have another girlfriend who went through something similar--her mother is downright abusive verbally to her (and was physically abusive in her childhood) and calls her worthless and a bad mother. This friend is one of just two siblings, and her elder sister, who is a big flake, does nothing for the mother and gets all sorts of praise. So my friend is the one who drops everything she is doing every time her mother has yet another emergency room trip (and some of her problems are exacerbated by her psychological states) as her mother has no one else to help, but the end result is that then her mother just abuses her from the hospital bed. This friend is happily married and miserable because of the guilt and shame her mother puts on her and she lacks the strength to break out of the role she is in. She feels alone because none of the rest of her friends have crazy abusive mothers.

So most people have something going on that's isolating. For me, trying to focus on praying for them while praying to be more mindful of what is GREAT in my life is helping me to feel less depressed and isolated.