Dealing with Family Crisis

     This week I had the opportunity to discuss what to do when the family is under stress. Like any other family, my family has gone through a fair share of family crisis. Throughout this week's lesson, we talked about what things can cause stress to a family and how to get over that stress. Stress can be caused by an event or a stressor. Sometimes we think that the best way to deal with something is to just ignore it and never speak about it, but something that I took away from this lesson is that coping is not just getting by, it is making those adjustments that will help the family progress.
   
     A few weeks ago, I was woken up in the middle of the night by a call from my oldest sister. She was calling to inform me that my grandmother had passed away. This was not something that happened out of nowhere, we knew it was coming because we had known that she wasn't doing well a few months back. Although I knew that day would come, I found myself crying uncontrollably. Now, you must know, I was not very close to my grandmother at all, I had met her once 22 years ago and had not seen her since. I had only vague memories of her. Something I learned this week is that it is not the event that creates feelings, it's the thoughts of the event that create feelings. I was having trouble understanding why I was so sad and heartbroken over her death when I wasn't close with her at all. I realized that the reason I was really sad to hear about her death was because I was thinking about it, I was focused on the event itself. All I could think of was that she had died and it was making me feel guilty for not really getting to know her, and also sad because I would no longer get the opportunity to do so in this life. But most of all, I was sad because I was thinking of my dad and how he must be feeling. 

     This event could have been something that I could have easily ignored because I was not close with my grandmother, but I think that taking the time to really process it and figure out how to get passed it helped me in the end. I think what helped me process it was knowing that she is in a better place now and that even though I didn't have the opportunity to get to know her while on earth, I will get to see her again eventually.