Where is My Resilience?

A few years ago I would have assured you (and myself) that I possessed great resilience; I would have stated it unequivocally and categorically. I had evidence of my deep and enduring strength and fortitude. I was not only a survivor; I was a victor, not a victim. My disdain for those who played victim* was unkind and dwelt in the harshest part of me. It grew (as these things do) from my own self-doubt and a need to distance myself from those shameful feelings.

That was before I stumbled and fell, and though I managed to stand back up, I’ve been trying to regain my balance ever since. My efforts have cost me thousands of dollars, years of time spent chasing the answer, and have left me questioning that resilience.  Is it possible that what I considered resilience was merely good luck?

Luck is a relative term. To many people, my life probably seems a charmed one. I grew up in a nice house with plenty of food on the table. We never worried about money, and my parents (generously) provided all of us with college tuition. I didn’t consider us rich—certainly not compared to my friends’ families who vacationed in the Bahamas and Europe while we went camping or got cars as high school graduation gifts (in addition to being provided with college tuition), not typewriters.

I don’t consider myself unlucky, and though my life on closer inspection doesn’t look all that enviable,whose does? There is no need for me to list the moments that hurt, scarred, and made me who I am, they are there, not notches on a belt, rather hashtags on my heart. Each of those moments impacted me and prepared me for the next blow life would deal; they made me stronger and tougher. They built my resilience.

Resilience is important, but it isn’t infinite. By the end of 2010 I was so emotionally wrung out I didn’t have the strength to access it. Had I spent all my resilience going through a horrible divorce, fighting for a job that yielded me a daily battle to effect even small changes, and watching my (step)mother die all in the same two-year time span? What I do know is that within a month of mother’s death, my new boss decided to make an example of me to prove his strength and forced me out of the job I had grown to hate but was clinging to madly. It was as easy for him as a hyena taking down a lame impala.

It’s been five years, and I am still recovering. When I was in my late thirties I read Hope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters, and finally stopped questioning why I couldn’t get over my mother’s death thirty years earlier. I finally understood there are experiences that are so profound and so deeply affecting they take years to process, and we never ‘get over’. I can’t compare losing a job to losing my mother, but for better or worse, my job defined me, and at the time, my job and my daughter were the only things in my life that felt safe and sure. Losing that job was like getting tossed out of the lifeboat (albeit a leaky one).

What happened to my resilience? I know it’s around here someplace, but like my collection of cookie cutters, and my little blue book, I can’t seem to locate it. Without it my mistakes and doubts are magnified. The volume gets turned up for criticism but muted for kindness. Friends try to shore me up, and I see their lips moving, but can hardly make out the words. I want to stamp my feet and pump my fists, but I’ve done that and it didn’t work. I think something more subtle is required. It may take quiet and stillness. It may take intention and invitation, none of which am I particularly skilled in.

• Can I coax it back?
• Can I write it back?
• Can I seduce it, or meditate on it?
• Have you seen it?
• Is it hidden between the lines of my writing?
• Is it masquerading as something else?
• Is it all or none of the above? My questions are not necessarily rhetorical. Have you ever lost your resilience?

There are many moments in our lives that create dividing lines; before and after type lines. I certainly have my share, and though I am not great at remembering specific years when things happened, I can often relate them to these cataclysmic events. ‘Oh yes, that was the same year the tree fell on the house, or the year grandpa got sent to jail’ for example. The year I lost my job, my way and my balance followed the years I lost almost everything else. I am still fighting my way back. I said my word for this year would be WRITE, but I’m using editorial license; this will be the year I find and reclaim my resilience.

*I am not referring to the many people who are truly victims of abuse, cruelty, usury, political regimes, and the like, but the people who blame anyone but themselves for the ordinary things we all endure.