Just because it’s not as hard doesn’t mean it’s easy.
I was talking to a mom of three recently. Her older two are twins. She was telling me how unexpectedly hard her second, one-baby pregnancy was. She had thought it would be a breeze, since she had already gestated twins. And, she acknowledged, it *was* easier, but it was still pregnancy. It was still hard. And even though I’ve never had twins, I knew exactly what she was talking about.
When I’m going through something, I think of the most extreme other instances of it I can recall — in my own life or in the lives of others. And I think, why am I having a hard time with this when I went through so much worse before? Or when that person over there has it so much worse right now?
Let’s be real: There’s no hard-time pie. You having a really big slice doesn’t mean my slice necessarily has to be less big. Lots of us are guilty of minimizing our own experience through comparison. But just because something is less hard doesn’t mean it’s easy. And thinking our hard thing should be easy is a recipe for bad feelings. So, let’s all try to cut that out, ok?