“When the dark cloud of doubt, anger or worry begin to move upon you, steady yourself in the knowledge that in time, the storm will pass.” -Bryant McGill

Last week was full of unfortunate events. It started on Sunday morning when I got some news that I wasn’t expecting; it came out of nowhere and took the wind right out of my sails. I felt a profound sense of loss and sadness with the possibility of an upcoming change.

On Monday morning, I felt energized and excited to start a new week, it would be a good week! I was shuffling through some papers and came across some documents that I had overlooked; important documents that should have been taken care of weeks ago. An uncomfortable heat burned in the pit of my stomach. I felt shame: I had been irresponsible and was worried about telling my husband.

Despite my positive outlook, Tuesday and Wednesday brought more bad news: a friend fell and broke her neck, a friend lost her dog to cancer, and my son’s baseball teammate was hit in the face with a baseball. I cried tears of joy when a dear friend called to tell me she landed an amazing job. Ah!! The week would get better!

On Thursday afternoon I received a phone call from my cousin in Wales: my aunt (my mom’s sister) had passed. My heart ached, and my gut wrenched with sadness. My aunt reminded me of my mom and hearing about her passing stirred up feelings of loss and despair all over again.

On Friday morning, I went to visit my Dad. We sat in the warm sun in his backyard and just talked. I felt happy and rested after seeing him and went home to make a cup of coffee and to work on my writing.

When 3:00 pm rolled around, I got in the car to pick up Connor from school. As I was backing out of the garage I heard a horrible scraping noise: I had left the hatch open and I had backed into the open garage door. Ugh! Minimal damage to the car, minor damage to the garage door.

“Could this week get any worse?” I asked myself.

When Connor got in the car, he knew something wasn’t right. As we pulled into the driveway, he saw the broken garage door; a small gasp escaped from his mouth. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

Connor took my hand then said: “It’s okay Mom, where there’s rain, there’s a rainbow”. Then he leaned over and gave me a hug.

My mom always told me “You’re so hard on Connor, Karen. Go easy on him.” I had always been tough on him; he had developed into this tough kid with thick skin and here he was showing a gentle side of him I had never seen before.

“Where did you hear that?” I asked.

“I have no idea; it just came out” he replied.

Connor was my rainbow, showing up in the midst of my dark cloud.

The storm will pass. In the meantime, I will maintain a positive attitude, surround myself with positive people and have faith a rainbow will appear.