Bad days don’t tend to tell you in advance when they’re going to happen; they just drop in your lap, unexpected, and you either swing at the curveball or watch it float by for a strike.

This week, I dealt with a curveball. Without going into detail about the situation, I had to make difficult decisions on behalf of a very dear family member, but here’s the spoiler alert: everything is okay.

It’s not the particular situation, anyway, that’s the issue — it’s that whole curveball thing, because inevitably, they come along, and while it’s difficult to plan for every situation out there, being strong enough to keep your eye on the ball and take a swing at it instead of letting it put you in the hole, is a result of working to become strong. Even when you don’t know they’re coming, pulling yourself together enough to take a swing and connect is far better than letting a situation freeze you from fear.

Being strong in this case meant not just physically or mentally, but emotionally, which I think is a byproduct of doing the hard mental work. This is one of the biggest reasons I advocate against taking shortcuts with diet plans; there’s an enormous amount of challenging headwork that has to take place in order to grow enough to understand ourselves. The biggest deception we can commit is to take the easy route and lie to ourselves. Doing the hard work helps me in everything else I do; I can stay levelheaded in the face of the unexpected.

I’m not here to beat my own drum. I’m here to say that investing the time and effort it took to heal myself, which is an ongoing and never-ending process, served me well when I faced a challenging decision that my family member trusted me to make more than twenty years ago. I doubted my decision, and I felt horrible and guilty, but I trusted my instincts and made sure she got the care she needed and deserved. I think, in the long run, what happened will be helpful for both of us; it was just an unexpected hiccup in the process.

The surprising part to me is that once the whole event was over, I realized I hadn’t simply fallen apart. I still haven’t — and I won’t. I didn’t give in to emotions and decide I needed to medicate myself with food; in fact, eating my feelings, something I would have justified doing not awfully long ago in stressful circumstances, never even occurred to me as an option. I wasn’t devastated or a hot mess; I was able to keep myself focused and ready to do what needed to be done.

Although I’d prefer such circumstances never happen, I’m learning that I’m stronger than I realized. Each step toward physical health has also been a bolster to my mental well-being.