You use vicissitudes to refer to changes, especially unpleasant ones, that happen to someone or something at different times in their life or development. Whatever the vicissitudes of her past life, Jill now seems to have come through. the continuous changes and problems that affect a situation or someone's life vicissitudes of (vicissitudo, from vicissim , from vicis; VICARIOUS)
the successive, alternating or changing phases or conditions of life or fortune; ups and downs; the difficulties of life; difficulties or hardships which are part of a way of life or career
1 Regular change or succession of one thing to another; as the vicissitudes of day and night, and of winter and summer; the vicissitudes of the seasons 2 Change; revolution; as in human affairs We are exposed to continual vicissitudes or fortune