Disappointment Isn’t a Problem That Needs Fixing
It’s a reminder that life begins and ends with complexity, not perfection
Five years ago, at age 31, I became the widowed mom of a toddler when my husband, Aaron, died of a brain tumor — immediately following my father’s death, and before that, a miscarriage.
I now think of 2014 as the year I became an expert at living through awful things, and I assumed at the time that all that devastation would make any future disappointments more manageable. If you’ve gone through something truly hard — if you’ve cremated your husband and spread his ashes in his favorite river, if you’ve had your six-year-old child stare wistfully out the window and sigh, “I can’t wait to die and get to know my dad” — the idea of sweating the small stuff can feel like an impossible luxury. You wish for the kind of routine bummers that dotted your life before the tragedy. How nice to have the worst thing in your life be an inconsiderate friend, a slight at work, or a frustrating conversation with a partner.
And yet.
As of this writing, I am the author of three books on grieving, none of which has sold as well as I’d hoped. I’m aware of how ridiculous that complaint sounds after what I just told you. But it turns out that terrible loss doesn’t make you immune to…
