Coping

It's been a whole bunch of awful weeks. Today I feel the need to summarize them all under the term "coping", because I am realizing how important that little skill is. It might just be the most important thing a child learns.

I feel I've been out of the awful stuff for about a week now. Yet today coping was up there in lessons all around me. I spent the last 24 hours being enthralled by the youtube sensation Talia Joy. A 13 year old cancer-fighter who I've heard of but went looking for only after hearing that she had died this week. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and boy was it worth the fuss. She embodied everything that is coping with the most difficult of diagnosis at the toughest of ages. She reveals that she clung to makeup after a family friend who also had cancer showed her some makeup tricks. It got me thinking today.

Sometimes I wonder why people act out in such seemingly small circumstances. The people we call dramaqueens, or those who get a little too angry at others and seem so self-centered. The substance abusers, the hermits. We all have our thing. And when we don't, the worst ones emerge. At my age this shouldn't be a revelation, but when I look at myself, and those closest to me, it is. Examining coping helps me help the ones I love. Well sorta. It can be a bit frustrating when you realize what someone has lacked and simultaneously realize that you cant grow it in them the same way as an adult as one would get it as a child.

Point is, we all need to look at coping over and over again. Just when you think you've learned it, something harder can come at you. There's no shame in taking a page from all the best books and forming a bulletproof coping encyclopedia for yourself.