Living: the ultimate team sport

Life Experiences That Hurt and Help

Posted on March 2, 2026 Updated on March 1, 2026

We don’t have to live a long life to have difficult episodes that we want to move on from and forget. We escape those times and are better off as a result. We are so relieved to be done with those times but guess what? We aren’t done with them.

Case in point: my father died from Alzheimer’s complications October 2007; I was the primary person involved with managing his care. A few months after Dad died, another family member was diagnosed with dementia and the caregiving journey started all over again, but my experience with Dad helped with my sister-in-law’s disease journey. And now years after she died, I find my experience still coming into play to benefit others, because let’s face it, dementia is alive and well in our world, in our cities, and in our neighborhoods. It is still difficult to draw upon my previous personal experiences from which I thought I had escaped, but it is affirming to know that because I had those experiences, others can be helped.

Whether past experiences center around health issues, relationship issues, financial devastation, or any number of not so great life experiences, we all learned something from them, and because we learned something from them, others can be guided through their own similar circumstances.

If you are able, let your own life lessons become those from which others can benefit. But if you struggle to resurrect those hard learned lessons due to the difficulty of doing so, I support you in stepping away because only you know what you can handle while still supporting your own mental health.