My daughter looked at me recently with tears in her eyes and asked a question that I suspect millions of people have asked themselves.
“How did I get here?”
She wasn’t asking for directions. We have our phones for that, because God forbid we have to read a damn map!
She was reflecting on the last six years of her life.
Six years ago, things were good. She had her successful career as a stylist, raising her children in a nice home in a nice neighborhood, making plans for the future. Then life did what life sometimes does. Life started Life’n! It kicked the shit out of her. It kicked us all, but it kicked her the hardest!
She was diagnosed with a serious illness and just under two years later, she lost her daughter in a tragic car accident.
Recently, her son lost his father, and she lost her friend and her former long-term partner to sudden death. Followed by yet another loss only eight weeks later.
Last winter she suffered a relapse that has affected the career she has had for damn near 30 years and worked so hard to build.
One loss would have been enough to bring most people to their knees. She’s had to absorb them one after another while somehow still getting up every morning. And most days managing to smile which never ceases to amaze me. She amazes me.
When she asked, “How did I get here?” there wasn’t an answer I could give that would make any of it make sense.
The truth is, I’ve asked myself that same question more times than I care to admit. I still do.
I wake up, head off to work, and think, How the hell did I end up here?
Years ago, I invested a small amount in a single stock that, had I been able to leave it alone, would be worth well over $1.5 million today. But life happened. I was supporting my family, paying tuition, and sometimes survival requires you to cash in tomorrow so you can make it through today.
Between that investment, rental income, and Social Security, retirement could have looked very different. There would be no clock punching. There would be plenty of beach sitting.
I’ve started businesses that probably would have succeeded had I picked better partners, trusted my instincts, or ignored the people who told me I was crazy. Not that I’m comparing myself to my birthday partner, but guessing Steve Jobs was also called crazy along with every other visionary! It’s like showing up early to the party. No one else is there!
I’ve made mistakes and missed opportunities. I’ve taken detours I never planned to take. Life has certainly handed me more than my share of challenges. I was parentless as a teen. Watched my mother die for many years. Became a caretaker when I needed care myself.
But as difficult as they’ve been, they don’t compare to watching your child carry a burden you wish you could lift from her shoulders.
That’s one of the cruelest parts of being a parent. Your children never stop being your children. Whether they’re hurting at five or forty-five, you hurt. Maybe even more. Because you can’t fix it. There is no bandaid for this boo boo.
As we talked, I realized something.
“How did I get here?” is a question that almost always points backward.
And while it’s a perfectly human question, it rarely gives us a useful answer.
There is no explanation that makes tragedy fair. Sometimes there isn’t a damn lesson. Sometimes life simply unfolds in ways we never could have imagined. Sometimes life just be life’n the hell out of us.
The better question is this:
“How do I get somewhere better from here?”
That question has movement. It has possibility. It has hope.
We cannot rewrite yesterday.
We can’t undo the diagnosis.
We can’t bring back the people we’ve lost.
We can’t recover every missed opportunity or every dollar that slipped through our fingers.
But we can decide what tomorrow might look like.
We can take one small step.
Followed by another.
And then another.
The last six years have contained some of the darkest days our family has ever experienced. There have been moments when hope felt ridiculously hard to find.
But I still believe this:
Our story isn’t over.
As long as there’s still breath in us, there is another chapter waiting to be written.
So, if you find yourself asking, How the f*%k did I get here?…give yourself grace. Many of us have been there. Some of us are there now.
Just don’t stay there.
When you’re ready, ask a different question.
Not “How did I get here?”
But “How the hell do I get out of here?”
Because that’s the question that just might change your life.
Third Act Truth: We can’t go back. We can only get better at going forward.