Struggle & Why We Should Talk About It

I have started seeing more of my friends on social media posting about their life struggles lately. Every time they do, it seems to be preceded by a qualification like, “I don’t usually talk about this, but …” or “maybe I shouldn’t say this, but …” Always a “but”. Always an attempt to justify or excuse or apologize for talking about something that might make someone else uncomfortable. And inevitably I always jump in to cheer them on: Yes! We need more of this! Thank you for sharing your struggle! Thank you for being authentic!

In this digital, social-media world where we can pretty much cherry-pick the pieces of our life we share with people to paint the most beautiful picture possible and tie it up in a sparkly bow, we don’t get to witness people’s struggles much anymore. And we’ve conveniently been given an “out” from the need to be vulnerable with anyone if we don’t want to. And I get why we wouldn’t want to.

Real vulnerability – letting people see all the dark, twisty, imperfect, unpolished, raw parts of you – is terrifying.

Because what if those vulnerable parts of you are not met with compassion? What if they are met with judgement, or anger, or shame? (Let’s be honest, they have been. We all know what that feels like. Which is why we are not rushing to put ourselves out there and possibly be met with that pain again.)

But here’s what we miss when we don’t get vulnerable: we miss out on real connection. I mean the kind of connection where we can just be with someone else, where we feel totally safe to let down the masks and the facades and all the protective gear we lug around with us all day out in the big scary world, where we don’t have to censor ourselves or think about what we’re going to say next in case we accidentally let our true thoughts or feelings out and then OhMyGod who knows what comes next??

I know relationships that have shriveled and died on the vine because of a lack of real vulnerability and connection. Because they never got to know who each other actually was.

We struggle to be vulnerable for a lot of reasons. I don’t know about you, but fear of judgement is a huge one for me. The first few years of my marriage were really really hard, the first year in particular. And for that first nine or ten months of that first year I did not talk about it to anyone. Because I had always gotten the message that the first year after you get married is the “honeymoon phase” and I thought I was supposed to be blissfully happy with my husband (and we had our moments, but we were NOT blissfully happy that first year). And so I thought I was absolutely failing at marriage. Finally, almost at our one-year anniversary, I mentioned something about it to my best friend. And she didn’t skip a beat before saying to me, “oh yeah my first year of marriage was SO hard. It’s a thing, the first year of marriage is hard. Nobody ever told you that? You’re so normal.” And I felt simultaneous relief (because thank god I was not alone) and anger (because why did nobody tell me this?! I was duped!) From that moment on, I decided I was going to talk about the imperfections in my marriage, and encourage other people to talk about theirs, too. This week a friend of mine (who, frankly, I always thought had the most perfect marriage ever) posted on social media that she’s having a hard time in her relationship and is really turning to her faith to work through it. I jumped right in with a big “Thank you for this authentic post!!” Because the more of us who talk about our struggles, the more of us there are who know we aren’t alone in our own. And the more we get to see that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship!

Just in case you didn’t know, EVERYBODY STRUGGLES. Everybody. Nobody has a perfectly easy and joyful life all the time. Not even Oprah. I don’t know Oprah personally, but I can say with a good amount of confidence that she struggles. Because it is part of the human condition. It is how we grow. 

Notice that I did not say everybody suffers. I said everybody struggles. Because through my own struggles, I have come to understand that finding the blessings and the lessons in our challenges is how we evolve. It’s the point of the struggle. Struggling is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. (I recognize that may be an unpopular opinion but stick with me.) I have met people who have been through some of the most painful struggles you can imagine … and they are some of the happiest, most grateful people I know. They don’t consider themselves as having suffered. And I know people who have experienced relatively minor struggles and hardships by comparison who live their entire lives in perpetual suffering. How we view our experiences and the stories we tell about ourselves are what define our lives.

We can choose to learn from our struggles and grow, or stay stuck in them and suffer.

I was stuck in my struggles for a long time. I think part of what kept me stuck was how alone I felt, and how much I made myself wrong for feeling the way I felt. When I started talking with people about it, getting honest and vulnerable and raw with my feelings and everything I was experiencing, I got to see myself reflected back to me in a whole new light. I was stuck in a story that had been spinning round and round in my head for such a long time it was on auto-pilot, I couldn’t even see it anymore. I had to widen back. And frankly, life kind of had to shove me into a new point of view.

I haven’t wanted to talk too much about the biggest struggle that got me to where I am because I didn’t want to be defined by it. I had cancer when I was 28 and my oldest daughter was only 4 months old. It put me in kind of a unique niche of struggle: “young moms with cancer.” I didn’t know anyone else who had gone through it, and was surprised that my doctors at Mayo Clinic didn’t have much experience with it either. (I mean, it’s Mayo Clinic, aren’t they supposed to have seen everything?!) When I went into remission I wanted to just be done and didn’t want to talk about it much anymore. I didn’t want to be defined by the cancer or the surviving of the cancer, I wanted to just be me. So I’ll post about it from time to time when the anniversary of the experience rolls around (it helps keep my life in perspective) but I don’t live my day-to-day thinking about it anymore. I guess that’s the privilege that comes with getting to the other side of that experience. But you know what? And this is weird for me – people have started asking me to talk about it. I’ve gotten three or four calls in the last couple years from people who knew what I’d gone through asking if I’d be willing to talk to another young mom who was just diagnosed with cancer. I met an artist who, upon hearing my story, got silent for a little bit and then told me that she had had cancer decades before when she was only in her 20s and ultimately needed to have her uterus and ovaries removed. She didn’t even tell her parents about it. They still don’t know. And she told me that if she had had my story back then, she would have felt so much less alone.

And to me, that’s the key.

I think we all need to feel less alone in our struggles. We all need to feel a little less crazy, a little less isolated, a little less lonely and scared and ashamed for the things we have and are going through.

Because EVERYBODY struggles. And it’s how we go through the struggle and come out the other side that defines our stories and our lives. And when we have the ability to go through hard things with other people, to be met with love and compassion, to receive support, to see ourselves reflected in the experience of another, we have such a greater opportunity for real healing. We have a better chance of taking that struggle and turning it into a lesson that turns into a blessing that helps us evolve and change, rather than getting stuck in suffering.

And bigger picture: maybe if we start seeing the commonality in our struggles we will start to remember that we really are all one big human family. There is more that connects us than divides us. And maybe if we remember that connection, we can start loving each other more and healing the rifts amongst us and creating more harmony on the planet. 

So, all that to say, I’m going to start talking about my story and my struggles more here. Because if they can help even one person feel less alone, that’s enough for me.

I see you. I love you. Keep going.