Everyone has a stressful day, some days are harder than others, but we always have those days where that stress keeps us on edge and a little irritable. Today I am going to talk about how stress affects not only yourself, but your family as well and those who are near you.
Growing up both of my parents worked. My mom did her own quilting business and my dad worked at a phone company in town. At one point in my high school time, my dad was having problems with his left eye. He would talk about the pain he would have behind his eye, and how he could see things behind his eye that were floating around, he explained it as a bubble in his vision that no one else could see. Pretty soon his eye got bad enough where my mom had to take him to the doctors. Weeks and months had passed, my dad had to have surgery on his eye because something inside his eye was going wrong, and the doctors didn't catch the problem soon enough. Now because of that little incident, my dad can no longer see out of his left eye. It throws him off in so many ways, but he has learned to cope with his eye and he's accepted the fact that he can no longer see out of it.
During the time of his surgery's, my dad couldn't go to work. My mom had to do double her work on quilts to continue having that income we needed as a family, and having a total of 8 kids at home could be a little hard. As my mom picked up my dad's role as the bread maker, as older kids, we had to pick up our mom's spot in the house cleaning, cooking and taking care of the younger kids. The biggest thing we learned at that time, was that we couldn't have made it through that stressful time in our lives if we didn't have each other. My dad healed from his surgery's and was able to go back to work, then our roles as individuals went back to how they were, just a little different. After that, my mom knew what we were capable of, so she kept us busy either helping her, my dad, or my siblings.
From my experience, my dad's problem with his eye affected all of us at home. Our roles changed in order to keep us going. We had to shift our positions in life to help with the situation at home. In my family, when we have stressful events happen, towards the end we tend to grow closer with one another because in those moemnts, we have to learn to rely on each other in order to get through. It's the same with other families too, when something happens to a sibling of yours, or a parent or spouse, who do you rely on? Those you trust the most.
Some people may call these events a crisis, and that may be true. I have learned two different things about a crisis. It gives us a chance of opportunity, and it also puts us in a dangerous situation. With my dad, the danger was taking the risk of my dad going completely blind, but he still has one eye to see out of. The opportunity, my family and I grew closer together as I explained earlier. We built a greater trust in each other.
Here's a warning to each of you. Don't take stress on your own, no matter how tough you think you are. Think about it, when someone is diagnosed with cancer, could they go through chemotherapy alone or their normal daily activities? When someone has surgery, are they able to feed themselves and continue having that income? When you lose someone close to you, do you keep it bottled up inside saying you're fine? You may be able to deal with these things alone, but only until it eats at you and then you collapse from stressful exhaustion. Don't deal with these things alone, you have people around you that love you and will do anything for you, they just need you to open up to them, so they can help.
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