I'm coming to the end of the six-month research phase for a book I'm writing on resilience. Over the course of these many months, I've had the privilege of interviewing over 100 individuals who have demonstrated sustained and remarkable resilience while weathering tragic loss, trauma, and adversity. And in each and every one of these interviews, we reach a point at which, for perhaps even the briefest of moments, I am able to convince the individual sitting across from me that in fact, (s)he is resilient.
There is something about resilience that cloaks it from our awareness, an ethereal quality that lies forever beyond our purview -- the moment we try to grasp it, or define it, is the moment it recedes further from our understanding.
It's as though we don't believe resilience could possible be at play in the midst of our own "mundane" life.
I was recently listening to an interview with Bruce Springsteen on the program Desert Island Discs, on BBC Radio 4. While reminiscing about his own childhood, Bruce said: "I believe every artist had someone who told them that they weren't worth dirt and someone who told them that they were the second coming of the baby Jesus, and they believed 'em both." I couldn't help but think how those words echoed so much of what I had heard time and again during my resilience interviews.
If what I believe to be true, that resilience is something that lies within each of us, why is it the case that some people appear to be able to move forward in their life after adversity and trauma, while others become disillusioned, untethered, and overwhelmed? I think the answer lies, at least in part, in those words of Bruce Springsteen -- a choice, whether conscious or not, to see ourselves not as destitute, but rather, as "the second coming of baby Jesus." Because it is within this place of worthiness and love, that we enlist the fortitude needed after trauma and adversity, a blind faith that allows us to take those tentative steps towards the unknown.
Resilience is not a matter of withstanding or surviving something; instead, it's a decision to let go of what you always believed your life to be in order to reawaken to what life is moving you towards.
We often think of resilience as a manifestation of the human spirit's ability to survive the unfathomable -- those grand disasters and tragedies that populate news headlines and our social media feeds. It's as though we don't believe resilience could possible be at play in the midst of our own "mundane" life.
A clear example of this arrived in my inbox a few weeks ago, a message from a young mother named Natalie Doyle, a message that quite literally took my breath away with its vulnerability and honesty. The message began, "To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm even emailing you. I don't even think this is a story for your book... I am no known athlete, actor, or doctor. I am just a mom..."
The letter details the struggles that Natalie and her husband have faced these past five years. She describes being pregnant five times, and shares that she has "three beautiful babies, and one angel baby who I was able to hold and at least say goodbye." She shares that 10 days after her second child was born, they discovered that he has cystic fibrosis... She talks about feeling as though a part of her "had died" and that "from there, our lives changed forever... I wanted to give up." A subsequent pregnancy brought her "angel baby," and now they have a third child who is almost 11 months old... She too has cystic fibrosis.
Resilience resides in communion, not in isolation.
Towards the end of each interview, I always ask the following question because I believe this question elicits the most wholehearted responses -- it's a question that forces us to wrestle with our demons of inferiority and aloneness, and somehow in that process of responding to the question, each person manages to transcend that most painful of human conditions, and in so doing touches the divine within each of us.
So here is Natalie's response to the question: What are you doing when you feel most beautiful?
"For me, it's making sure that my children are bathed... I'm reading stories to them at night... and trying to teach them strength. To try to teach my kids how to deal with the struggles that you and I have faced in life; and unfortunately, I'm having to teach them this at such a young age... where I don't think you or I were ever exposed to this kind of struggle so early in life.
I know that I'm not perfect, but most of the time I feel as though I'm doing this. Sometimes I may fall apart, and they see my cry, but what I want to teach them is strength, and I want to teach them that nobody is perfect... and I want to teach them that life is going to throw us curveballs, so we will need to learn how to deal with them."
And that brings me to the central question of my quest to find the essence, strands, and embers of resilience: Is there hope and redemption in mining our painful past, or is the cost of such a journey too great to embark upon?
I believe that our greatest strengths are often found in the stories others see in us rather than in those threadbare delusional stories we tell ourselves, those we have carried around inside of us for far too long. Resilience resides in communion, not in isolation. I can think of no better way to express this than in the closing words of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
If you, or someone you know, has a story of resilience you would like to share with me for the book I'm working on, please contact me at: runjprun@gmail.com
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