This week has been one of THOSE weeks. You know, the kind of week that takes everything I have and then some… The kind of week that makes me want to curl up in a ball, pull the covers over my head, and escape from reality. This week has felt like defeat and loss and trauma and heartbreak. This week has been really, really hard.

Being a mom is hard.

Being a friend is hard.

Being a painter is hard.

Being an employee is hard.

I have wanted to quit.  I wanted to run away.  I wish that things could be easy, that life could be okay.

But right now things aren’t okay, and that’s just the way it is.

And it’s weeks like this that I get to make a decision. I get to choose if I wallow in the unfairness of life and choose to pay attention to the pain, or I can breathe deeply, find some peace, and move on. I can choose pity or I can choose to keep going.

Sometimes life isn’t fair. People go through hard times. They don’t always get what they deserve.  Good people may die. People will disappoint. And sometimes, bad stuff just happens.

I like to quote Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, “The greatest measure of a man is not where he stands in times of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

As a mom, as a friend, as a painter, as an employee, I want to prove myself when the going gets tough. I want the people in my life to be able to say “she never quit, she never gave up”. I want to be the person that accepts life on life’s terms, rises above my circumstances even when I don’t feel like it and shouldn’t have to.

I have a tattoo of a dormant tree on my hip. It represents the fact that trees grow the most during the winter, the season where their leaves have fallen off and they look dead to the rest of the world. I think that is a great representation of our lives if we allow it to be. If we use the hard seasons, the painful weeks, the disappointments to learn and grow, eventually spring will come. And our greatest character will be forged in the dark times, so we can glow and dance when it arrives. So for now, I won’t run, even though it seems easier. I won’t hide. I will stay and fight.