My son has had a particularly difficult day. He is coming down with a cold which makes wearing his brace even more difficult. I told him he still had to do math because he took several months off from math while getting used to the brace. The math I told him to do involved angle measurements. I didn't think about this possibly reminding him of his appointment next month to see if his brace was working enough to prevent the need for major surgery, so we had a conversation about that. He said he was worried that the brace might not be working. I felt really bad for him but while he was over it quickly I started getting depressed because seeing my son in pain daily while also taking care of my dad who had knee surgery and is in a lot of pain from that as well as the loss of my mother. I have never seen my dad like this before and there is nothing I can do. Seeing my dad and my son in pain every day and not being able to do anything about it or get anything done because of circumstances beyond my control gets to me sometimes and I started to feel very stressed. My son could hear it in my voice. He put his hand on my shoulder and told me to take a deep breath and when I told him that doesn't work for me he said to try stoicism. Philosophy is one of the things my son has been interested in for a while now. I looked it up and found that it has some things in common with the serenity prayer.
