Sounds like these are some really tough times happening over there, I'm sorry to hear that. And I am sorry for your loss.

As for how to cope with it all...? A hard question with a million answers. Few of them are easy or what we want to hear.

Well, you just do. It's all you can do. What's the alternative? Cry? Freak out? Be depressed? Those are all okay to do, too, but once the tears have dried the problems are still there. So your only real choice is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even when the world is going down in flames, you still gotta go to the store for bread.

4 things I try to keep in mind when going through struggles:

1. To live is to suffer. This is a fundamental fact of life explored by every religion and philosophy since the beginning. Thankfully that's not all there is to life, but it is a big chunk of it. It's important to remember that suffering is built into us and brought about by simply being alive in a hostile and competitive world. We are wired to see threats (including negative predictions about the future) first, feel loss more strongly than gain, and to move through suffering due to the flood of wants and needs we seek to fulfill.

At best we might find momentary pockets of shelter from these storms... but we cannot stay there. If we are lucky, at some point we might be able exchange the hardest of struggles with less severe ones.

It may seem paradoxical, but accepting this fact actually helps lighten the weight of it. It helps answer the question of "why is this happening to me? Why me?" (The answer is, of course: because we are alive.)

2. We only have one life. We only get one chance to experience the whole palette of emotions that comes with living. You can't appreciate the light until you've experienced the darkness. Love us great, but its true value is only known if you've experienced a broken heart. So I try to see every situation, every emotion, as a gift. Sometimes it's a shitty gift you wish you could return but even a negative experience is still a better gift than, say, dying. Try to think of yourself as a poet, or an artist or musician that is purposely living through all the experiences, good and bad, so as to find insight, wisdom, and inspiration.

3. Stay in the now. Just as there is only one life, there is only one 'now'. And it is right now. And no other time. The only thing we really have to take care of is what is happening now. Yes, things happened in the past. And those things may have created the now we are currently in, but the past is no longer real. It's gone, vanished into thin air. It's just a figment of our imagination constructed by memories. When we look back on the past and feel regret, or lament some unfortunate turn of events or lousy upbringing, it's important to remember that those feelings are the only things that are actually real. The feelings we just created ourselves in this very moment over a story we just told ourselves. So, what stories are we telling ourselves? And why?

Or as I like to say "Stay out of the past, nothing new ever happens there."

Once you unshackle yourself from the stories you built up over a lifetime, you are no longer in a mental prison of your own making.

It feels as if the past is like a boulder rolling down a hill, its trajectory is our future. It feels as if this boulder which is our past must also dictate our path forward. If we came from one place, surely that means we'll end up where that path concludes, right? But that is an illusion. You can negate destiny itself simply by rejecting that premise and carving a new path forward at any time. It may not change the hurdles we face in the now but it does change our course out from this point.

Also, stay out of the future. For similar reasons. Unless you have a crystal ball, you don't really know what is going to happen. You can be smart and prepare for things likely to happen but there's no guarantee that they will. So there's no point in worrying about it.

When you narrow your scope down to just what is happening right now and what you need to do about it, it takes a ton of weight off your shoulders. No more past weighing you down, no more future keeping you up. Just stay in the now. The only thing that is actually real.

4. The power of perspective.

The power to frame things in your mind is a skill. It's a mental muscle that is initially weak but grows stronger the more you exercise it. This framing, a way of interpreting data, can alter your whole reality. Even in the darkest of nights it can lift your spirits and give you hope, or at least peace.

I don't feel like typing anymore so I will recommend to you a very powerful book. In English it's called 'Man's Search For Meaning' by Viktor Frankl. Or in the original title:

Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager

It's an easy read that explains a view on life that can make a tremendous impact on yours if you let it.

I hope some of what I wrote made some kind of sense. These ideas, simple though they may be, have helped me get through life.

Good luck and I hope brighter days are just around the corner for you. Sounds like you deserve some grace from the world and I hope you get it.