I don’t know about you, but I think I’m done with living through historic moments. The worst flood in Houston’s history, the worst world pandemic since the Spanish Flu one hundred years ago, the county with more Covid-19 cases in the U.S., and now, the worst winter storm Houston has ever seen.

I remember I once heard that the most difficult circumstances in our life come to teach us a lesson, but do we ever stop learning? Are we really prepared for anything?

Today I share the story of how mother nature came, once again, to teach us a lesson in humbleness and to measure our emotional fortitude, and our spiritual thermometer.

Two Sundays ago, we were celebrating a very special occasion because we had the great fortune to have my mom in town for her birthday. After spending several days thinking about the menu and several surprises for such a special day, I was feeling an enormous sense of gratitude for having her in Houston after so many years of celebrating her birthday from afar since she lives in Mexico City.

At the end of our meal and when my mom was about to “blow the candles” on the cake; an activity that I now have to put between quotations because of reasons we all know about, we started noticing a very drastic temperature change due to a winter storm we all knew was coming.

For people reading from out of state, we Houstonians check the weather several times a day as part of our daily routine because we all know that from November through March, we only see two seasons, winter and summer, who very politely take turns between them, “my turn today, your turn tomorrow.”

This winter storm that had us all excited about waking up to a snow-covered Houston, increased its intensity on Monday morning and woke us all up with a strange silence when we realized we had lost power and thus heat in our home.

School was canceled due to the dangerous road conditions, so we woke up to a series of mixed feelings: Excitement and joy when we saw our backyard covered with snow but also fear, and uncertainty of not knowing when the power was going to be back but assuming it would only take a couple of hours.

Even without power since dawn, our house felt fairly warm so we decided to take our skiing clothes out of the closet and to have a short stroll to a hill behind our house where our kids could play and have fun on the snow with a couple of sleds we had.

After no more than ten minutes of being outside, I immediately felt a hole in my stomach and knew that something was not ok. Even though I had several layers of clothes on and had experienced colder temperatures in several cities before, I started to feel a sharp and extreme cold hit my body. To my surprise, I saw that the temperature was 25 degrees, and it had no plans of coming up soon.

It was right then when angst hit me and it started to try and overtake me with fearful questions such as, When is our power coming back? Should we book a hotel? How are we going to spend the night? Is it only going to be one night? How cold is it going to get inside the house without having heat? I suddenly stopped those thoughts on their tracks and said, “enough!”, right now in this very instant, we are fine, let’s move on and see what happens. For someone who has experienced anxiety and panic attacks in the past, it meant the world to me to realize that I was able to control them at this time.

We went back to our house and nobody took their jackets or gloves off, we felt our home much colder. I remember that moment and I still feel a hole in my stomach…

It was then when I confirmed we were actually on emergency mode, once again. A state of emergency that felt familiar after Harvey and those first couple of months at the beginning of the pandemic, but with the same fear, uncertainty, and forced smile I had to show to keep my kids calm.

It was inevitable not to take a peek at the thermostat every time I passed by it and I could see how the temperature was getting lower and lower by the minute.

We thought about booking a hotel or going to a friend’s house at that point, but the icy roads were so dangerous at that moment that the city was recommending everybody to stay put.

Cold can be paralyzing, emotionally and physically. I knew I had to move but I just couldn’t. Suddenly I realized we were going to lose natural light very soon, so I decided to cook something with my mom, and to our surprise, we had also lost water.

With a few water bottles I had in the pantry we cooked a chicken broth with vegetables that really warmed our souls and gave us the energy we needed for what was yet to come.

The chimney’s fire helped us stay warm, however, we only had one log left, and all the branches we had brought in from our front lawn trees had already been burnt. But right as I was beginning to feel another angst episode, a dear friend showed up at our door like an angel from heaven bringing us a box filled with logs.

It’s extraordinary to know, once again, that when you live far away from your hometown, your friends become your family. My mom couldn’t believe how generous our friend had been, driving all the way to our house just to bring us the logs, and it was then when I told her she had experienced first-hand what I have been telling her for the past 16 years, that when you live away from your family, your friends are willing to share with you the warmth of true friendship by sharing with you things like such a precious commodity which was sold out all around town, a box of logs.

My mom was so moved, and cold I guess, that tears started falling down her cheeks, and we hugged each other really tight.

Soon after, our house went dark, and we gathered around the chimney to try to keep ourselves warm without achieving it. We went to bed around 7 pm probably just so we could get inside our covers to be a little bit warmer. My two youngest kids came to our bed after a while to try to stay warm, but the extreme cold and anguish kept us awake.

Suddenly our house reached 43 degrees inside and it was 17 degrees outside. We woke up paralyzed, frozen, worried, and extremely unmotivated.

It was then when I remembered a wonderful zoom conversation I had with Jessica Lahey thanks to Responsibility.org about how the most important thing during any crisis is our kids’ emotional health.

And yes, I couldn’t agree with her more. After 39 hours of anguish and freezing temperatures, I realized how conversations with our kids about overcoming hardship and how to control our thoughts and angst moments, will always continue throughout our lives. How each difficult test reaffirms to us that we do not control anything, that the challenges just come to our lives unannounced.

Today I share with you Jessica’s recommendations that helped me greatly to overcome those 39 hours of extreme cold.

1.- In moments of crisis, everything takes a back seat to our kids’ social-emotional health. Jessica mentioned that as human beings, we have the natural inclination during times of pressure to feel helpless, but she recommends that we try to intercept those feelings by giving our children a little more control and autonomy by assigning them responsibilities during times of crisis according to their age.

For example, my youngest son had the task of monitoring the fireplace and checking that the logs were properly placed, this activity gave him a sense of responsibility and some “control” in a situation of extreme uncertainty.

I must accept that giving my children responsibilities is hard for me since I have the false belief that I protect them by not assigning things to them, but today I realize that it is the exact opposite. Giving them tasks and responsibilities makes them feel independent, strong, and purposeful. My husband is the one who pushes me to do it and that is why I am very grateful to be raising our children together.

2.- It’s important to name our emotions. During those hours of so much fear and paralysis, I tried to name the emotions that I was feeling by saying them out loud and trying to show my children how they were not alone if they felt fear, cold, frustration, helplessness, or hopelessness.

At some point I said, “I feel so frustrated at not being able to leave the house, and not being able to make our power come back again!” - and my children responded, “Yes! Mom, me too! What can we do? To which I responded again from a place of total uncertainty, “I don't know, but what I do know is that we will be fine, and all this will soon pass, and things will go back to normal” - thank you, Jessica!

3.- Another piece of advice from Jessica that stuck with me was to praise our children for the process and not just the end result of their actions, to congratulate them when growth happens. During these difficult days, I tried to mention out loud how proud I was of how they were adjusting to the storm.

Jessica recommends that we praise their growth with highly specific feedback, for example: “You have done a very good job taking care of the fireplace.” "I loved how you shared that blanket with your brother", “I was fascinated by your positivity when you proposed to play a board game with the family despite the cold.”

4.- Finally, another technique that helped me a lot during those uncertain days was answering my children’s questions with another question, for example:

Son: Do you think we should try to go to a friends’ house?

Mom: What do you think?

Son: Well, it is dangerous to drive right now on the icy roads and maybe they also lose power.

Me: I agree with you, let’s stay put until we get our power back, sounds like a plan?

Son: Yes mom.

This technique helped my son process the situation by himself and find his own answers during a time of crisis.

Living this experience with my mother made me reaffirm how fortunate I was to be raised by someone who has the perfect combination of strength and support, with positivity and affection. My mom was the only one who saw me fall apart and she let me cry on her shoulder during the most difficult time. Love you, Mom!

I really thought that after living through Harvey and the pandemic, my children would had already graduated on issues about adjusting to change and how to be resilient, however, in retrospect, I realize that they will continue to learn these skills throughout their lives and each new challenge will bring them a new lesson to learn.

It may sound strange, but I feel very lucky to have lived this experience of so much uncertainty and stress with my children at home, especially now that they are three mature persons who also share their ideas, opinions, complaints, and frustrations, just like me.

I really hope from the bottom of my heart, that whenever they experience a time of despair again in their lives, at college or when they form their own families, that they remember our conversations and know that there’s always hope. A crisis always passes, and the most important thing is not to dread on why that difficult situation happened to us, but to feel proud of the person we chose to be when it happened.

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Jessica Lahey is a writer, teacher, and mom. She has been a teacher in different grades for more than 12 years in public and private schools. She writes about parenting and education for the Washington Post and the New York Times.

She has published two books:

The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go so Their Children Can Succeed

The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in Culture of Dependence.