Hi Jeff, I went through a similar time in my life. I’ll share my experience in hopes that you can get the sense how I can relate.

Two years ago my fiance cheated on me. All my friends knew about it, it happened while I was on a month long trip and no one wanted to get involved. I found out through an acquaintance on facebook the night before I returned. I was in a tight knit group and we all worked together, so I stayed professional even though I wanted answers and to be validated somehow. I ended up learning that all the fun people who were my friends were mostly gossipers and fence sitters. I was also in a toxic work environment, but also felt that I had to stay due to debt and was not able to leave without putting myself in a bad spot. I stayed, told myself that if I was stronger and more positive I could handle this. I got kicked in the teeth every which way professionally and lost promotions to people who partied more, wore shorter skirts or slept with the right people. After a year of getting more beatened down most of my friends gave up on me. I was grateful to have one person who was still there for me. One night I told her I was suicidal when I had a panic attack and she changed the topic to her Harvard interview, so I stopped talking to her. A week later my mom died. That all happened within a year. To this day my closest friends have no idea that mom died.

I’ve had a lot of things to reflect upon this past year; How I felt so guilty that I spent the last year of my mom’s life telling her how much I hated people, how I can’t blame my ex on all the things that didn’t go my way, how I wish I could have let go of the resentments sooner, etc.

If I could have told myself anything during that time, it would have been that as long as you try your best and keep your integrity, you will have nothing to regret. When bad things happen, it doesn’t necessarily mean you deserve it or that you are a bad person or that you made stupid decisions. Sometimes life just happens. When life gives you bad situations, just don’t make it worse for yourself. I didn’t exercise while I was in the toxic work environment and I blew a ton of money after my mom died.

While you are going through it, pretend you are a writer and try to imagine why someone would *want* this situation. For example, my mom and I had an estranged relationship for the majority of my life, but we reconciled for the last five. I beat myself up for telling her how much I hated people until a mother I spoke to told me how she was probably grateful that I needed her. That toxic job I hated allowed me to send my dad on a tropical vacation after my mom’s death which helped him have something to look forward to. I would have traded a decade of my life at a horrible job if I knew I could have given my dad a gift like that at that particular time. After that year I resolved to learn how to get over things as quickly as possible and how to cope with things better.

Lastly, I don’t have kids, but the one thing I would want to instill in them is not that I can protect them from everything or make everything perfect, but that I can be an example of how to cope well with anything. Find a different way to look at things. This may all sound trite, but an idea is just an idea until you believe it. We as humans have limited understanding and sometimes from our vantage point everything seems so meaningless. There are other ways to approach this, you can make your own shortcut if you can figure that out.
Bon courage.