The Capacity for Resilience

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance."
     Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

Lately, we have been exploring the subject of Resilience – bouncing back from hardship, adversity and trauma. Our last several posts have shared different ways we may be able to adapt to the challenges and difficulties in our lives. Based on an article in Psychology Today, “I Get Knocked Down – But I Get Up Again”,the final tip in our series is:

Trust Your Brain

To me the least known and most wonderful thing about resilience is that we are all capable of it. I have worked with veterans with trauma who thought there was no return. They felt like old men though they were barely 25. Now they are back on their feet, making friends, and working or attending college. Neuroscience has shown us that the brain is plastic and malleable: Change, growth, and understanding are always possible. —Emma M. Seppala, Ph.D., “Feeling It“  

It’s not been easy for her.  Not for a long time. 

Her husband died suddenly when they were young, leaving her with three small children to raise on her own.  But she did it and now they are each young adults, devoted to their mother and the light of her life.

A few years ago she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a tough diagnosis to receive.  Extensive surgery followed and the recovery was long.  But a recent scan showed no signs of recurrence, for which she is extremely grateful.  But the anxiety always lingers, always remains.

She lives with diabetes and has to carefully manage her life with the complications and risks it brings.   It compromises certain aspects of her life.  But she goes on in spite of it.

And, she has lived all her life with the fact that she has never really been able to follow her dreams, to use several of her most important gifts and the passions they stir, to their fullest effect.  There has always been something missing in her life and she has struggled to discover just how to find it. 

If there is any word that comes to mind as we have listened to her it is “resilience”.  She has overcome so much in her life, more than anyone should ever have to. 

Tragic death.  Difficult diseases.  Lack of affirmation.  Being forced to do so much on her own. 

But we see in her strength and resilience that are inspiring.  She doesn’t see herself as resilient at all; just doing whatever she had to do to get through.  But we see some inner resource, some innate power within that has seen her through.  Some call it God.  We certainly do.  And it has given her what she has needed to rise above her losses, her pain – physical, emotional and spiritual – while she was so often alone in pulling it all together. 

What impresses us most is now at age 55, she is coming into her own and really beginning to grow fully into who she has been created to be.  She is a strong, compassionate, passionate, caring, loving woman, mother, daughter and friend. 

One of the gifts that she was never able to fully use is her ability to sing.  She’s really good at it, tremendous, in fact.  But previously, she hadn’t been given the encouragement she needed to pursue that gift.  In fact, she was routinely discouraged.  But recently, she was the given the opportunity to perform and it stirred in her long-simmering desires to share her talents with the larger world.  She’s putting together a band, a set list and making plans to sing more and more.

Another of her gifts is the ability to write.  She has started and has almost completed a book based on her parents’ courtship during World War II, when her father was serving in Europe and her mother remained at home.  The letters she recently uncovered, her father’s letters home to his waiting fiancé, are a treasure of insight and love as they describe the longing of a young couple during war a lifetime ago.  

When she talks about the struggles we can see the pain in her eyes, hear the anxiety in her voice.  But when she speaks of her singing and her writing she comes alive.  Her eyes brighten.  Her voice is confident and clear.  She has hit her stride.  She is “at home” with herself, fully engaged in who she is and has been born to be.  That is resilience – rising above the challenges, going on in spite of the losses, stepping beyond the discouragements, living through the pain.

Webster’s Dictionary defines “resilience” as this – an ability to be able to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. 

That’s our friend.  Resilient to the core.

Photo by Sophia Ayame on Unsplash