Does adulthood ever get easier or is this normal?

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I honestly don’t know if we’ve just had the worst run of luck imaginable or if this is just what life is like.

March 2025 my mum became unwell. By June she’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died the very same week. We barely had time to get our heads around the diagnosis before she was gone.

Then came all the grief that goes with losing your mum.

In February this year I had an unplanned pregnancy which ended in an abortion.

The following month our landlord told us he was selling our flat. Cue absolute panic. We started selling anything and everything on Vinted to try and build some savings to try and scramble together a 5% deposit as he offered to sell it to us at value. Thankfully we managed to convince him to give us till the end of the year - I have a ShareSave maturing in December so that would be the boost we need.

Then June rolls around - the first anniversary of losing my mum - and work announces they’re closing my bank branch. I work for one of the big banks, so suddenly my own job is up in the air too. I opted for redundancy because financially it made the most sense, only to be told they might redeploy me anyway. So I spent weeks not knowing whether I was actually leaving or not. At the end of June I finally got the call to say I was getting my redundancy, and I even managed to get myself a job interview. For the first time in ages I thought maybe things were starting to look up.

All this time, in the background, my husband has been going through disciplinary meetings at his own work. His sickness absence after my mum died was being investigated, then another colleague put in a complaint about him. Because we work for the same employer (but different locations) I couldn’t even switch off from it - I’d go into work every day knowing what was happening. This week it all came to a head and he resigned before they could suspend him because he wanted to leave with a reference.

I’m just exhausted. It feels like every time one thing gets sorted, something else comes along and knocks us sideways. We’ve spent well over a year lurching from one crisis to the next and I honestly can’t remember the last time life just felt… normal.

Does it actually get easier? Or does life always seem to have something waiting round the corner?

This sounds really tough, I’m so sorry. Yes, things will get easier. It does sound like you have had an exceptionally bad run of luck.

All my sympathies - and that's a huge huge run of terrible thing to have happen all at once. I've had several of them, including my mum dying of pancreatic cancer in less than 3 weeks of diagnosis - we actually had to cancel her gym class because she was in hospital, and she died a month later, just to tell you how shockingly sudden it all was: The gym instructor was sending her a "get well soon" message after we'd been told she only had a few weeks.

I'm only telling you that just to say that that one event on its own knocked me for six for at least a year. (It only happened 18 months ago) Every time I thought of it, or wanted to call her, or just tried to work out if we had missed anything we could have seen earlier (but none of us can find anything except possibly in hindsight a couple of minor events) it just knocked me down again.

What I mean is, any one of those things happening on their own, knocks you off track and requires time to get over it. Psychologists often count a year to adapt to any major life change, even good ones, never mind terrible things.
So all of that happening within a short time must be next to unbearable.

I haven't read further before posting, so forgive me if you've replied to this already, but have you considered having therapy of some sort? Or just talk to your GP about how hard you're finding things at the moment and see if they can suggest anything - because it's really not surprising to find it hard to deal with so much grief and stress at the same time.

Sending my very best wishes and lots of

Im retired and retirement is supposed to be easy street because you have put in your work and paid your taxes for the community. Unfortunately it doesn't work out like that and sometimes you have to just suck it up (horrible expression that) and keep going. I currently have a whole lot of plates in the air and am waiting on 2 important lots of news with a third issue now having arrived.

It doesn't get any easier.

I think life ebbs and flows, you have good times along with the bad. I try to see the positives as much as possible, surround myself with friends, time alone when needed.

I say this after a terrible 12 months where my dad died, friend ended her life, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and a separation from children's dad. Oh and early menopause at 39, with no hope of HRT. Engaged in therapy and asked for help from the GP when needed.

You’ve had a really awful run of it. Things do tend to come in chapters like this. I hope your DH finds new work quickly and you can enjoy a period of calm for the rest of this year x

It does get easier for bad stuff still happens, I’ve now learnt to put the bad stuff to one side in my brain and try and enjoy the good stuff rather than wait for a time when everything is perfect.