The New Normal Will Be Worth the Wait

A Gift for Mom! 🤍

I know a lot of people hate the words “new normal.”

At one point in my life, I thought I may be one of them.

After my husband died by suicide, I had plenty of unkind thoughts toward the do-gooders who tried (even within weeks) to “normalize” our loss by commenting on how the kids were smiling again, or it was nice to see me having brunch with friends, or good to have me back in the school pick-up line.

The underlying trite message always seemed, “glad to see that things are getting back to normal.”

My husband was dead. The father of my three living, breathing, and deeply grieving children had been alive one morning and comatose by the afternoon. We will never be OK, I wanted to scream. Our world exploded into a million pieces when he died. We’re still digging out from underneath the rubble. There is nothing about this that is normal.

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It has been eight years since we buried my husband. I have since remarried—a widower actually, with four children of his own. Though our lives definitely lack the effortlessness of a 1970s family sitcom (not to mention the glaring absence of an ever-ready-to-help Alice), we do exist in some kind of beautiful existence of our own. At least we did. Until the pandemic.

The pandemic cued the sort of screeching halt to life in our house as I’m sure it did in yours. We have high-risk individuals living here. We had a graduating senior. We were in the middle of a new home purchase and move an hour away.

And you know what? I found myself looking forward to the days we can settle into a “new normal” again.

It is the “new” part that makes it OK. I will never get my first husband back. My children will always know their father is missing. Our old normal will never, in fact, exist again. But, our new normal was hard-won. Our new normal is precious in its own right.

It didn’t happen overnight like so many with rose-colored glasses willed it to. It took a conscious effort. It took courage. It took risk. It took work. But, once we achieved it, the “new normal” was oh so much better than the “new disaster” immediately following his death. The new normal came with new relationships, new dreams, new opportunities to help others through the hardest of their days.

RELATED: God is Not Done and He is Good

As this pandemic shifts and rolls and cracks beneath the old rhythms of our entire world, I’m aware of the disaster it is creating—in the health of individuals, in our country’s economy, in systems and ways of life we’ve all only ever known as normal.

Yet, I also know the new normal is coming.

It will be hard-won. It will take time and effort and sacrifice and love. But, if my new normal is any indicator of things, it will be so worth it in the end. It won’t be a consolation prize for how things used to be. Rather, it will be its own new, living, organic and wonderfully made creation.

I won’t rush the world to get there. I won’t speak useless platitudes of positive thinking that insult the very real suffering of so many. But, I think I’ll easily recognize when the world begins to really smile again. I’ll know when she finds a new normal. It will totally be worth the effort and wait.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

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Leslie McCaddon

Leslie McCaddon is a certified Life Coach and an aspiring novelist. You find her writing on Scary Mommy, Medium and Time Magazine. She is currently working on her first memoir and a novel based on her great-grandparents thrilling love story. She lives in California with her family and 4 dogs. You can find out more about Leslie at her website www.resiliencediariespodcast.com

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The New Normal Will Be Worth the Wait

The underlying trite message always seemed, “glad to see that things are getting back to normal.”

RELATED: In Times Like These, It’s OK To Cry

And you know what? I found myself looking forward to the days we can settle into a “new normal” again.

RELATED: God is Not Done and He is Good

Yet, I also know the new normal is coming.

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Leslie McCaddon

Farewell My Father: Walking the Trail of Beauty in Old Age

Sometimes Healing Doesn’t Look Like Moving On

Now that You’re Gone, I Sit In This Waiting Room Alone

She Was the Glue That Held Our Family Together

My Parents Will Never See This Face

The Due Date that Never Comes

Repotting Myself: What My One‑Armed Grandpa Taught Me About Growing Anyway

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

The New Normal Will Be Worth the Wait

The underlying trite message always seemed, “glad to see that things are getting back to normal.”

And you know what? I found myself looking forward to the days we can settle into a “new normal” again.

Yet, I also know the new normal is coming.

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Farewell My Father: Walking the Trail of Beauty in Old Age

Sometimes Healing Doesn’t Look Like Moving On

Now that You’re Gone, I Sit In This Waiting Room Alone

She Was the Glue That Held Our Family Together

My Parents Will Never See This Face

The Due Date that Never Comes

Repotting Myself: What My One‑Armed Grandpa Taught Me About Growing Anyway

When I Look In the Mirror, I See My Mother

I Lost My Daughter on Mother’s Day: 3 Truths I’m Believing Today

I Miss Having Parents

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