Resilience is a Pearl

My first blog post was less than six months ago.  It was a declaration of my renewed commitment to self-love and slowing down.  It was a promise to myself to continue on my journey toward a balanced life, and a promise that I’d take you on that journey with me.  I wrote effortlessly for two months, sharing my newfound optimism and philosophy on the power of mindset. 

I shared with you until life got hard. 

I shared with you until my dad got cancer.

It’s been three months since I lost the will to write; convinced that if I acknowledged my grief it would swallow me whole. I’ve written two drafts of this post in an attempt to skate around the rawness and weight of it all.  At first I tried writing about what a dumpster fire 2020 was (and it was), then I tried to focus on the beauty that came from the suffering (and it did).  As true as those words were, I knew at my core that they were just 1,365 words of avoidance.  I now know that in order to move beyond the emotional trauma, I must move through it. 

And yet, I sit here at this point in the story and all I can think to say is “I can’t do this”.  I want so desperately to place this chapter of my life in a dark box to never been seen again.  Logically I know that nothing remotely close to this is possible. I’m incredibly grateful that dad only lost a kidney and that he gets to keep his life.  It felt like I won the lottery when we found out he didn’t need chemo.  Over the past month I’ve been giddy with relief, telling myself “Shew that was a close one!” and attempting to move on with life as usual.  The cancer is gone – crisis averted.  Yet my avoidance of acknowledging the experience proves there is much work to be done.  I cannot simply file this difficult chapter away in the back of my mind, regardless of how brief it may have been.

As a psychology major (and lover of all things self-help) I see the value in reflection, but reflecting on traumatic experiences seems a bit like touching fire to remember that it burns.  Burn as it may, I believe that asking ourselves tough questions about our emotions is essential for growth.  Beyond that, there’s growing evidence that psychological trauma is literally stored in your body, causing a prolonged nervous system response.  Essentially, unresolved trauma can leave you stuck in a fight-or-flight response which wreaks havoc on your nervous system.  Check out this article for further info on that: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/can-trauma-be-stored-in-body.

So here I am, rehashing one of the hardest chapters of my life in an attempt to release little pieces of anguish over time. I think back on the moment that my mom said to me “I look around and realize that I never want to do any of this without your dad”, and I work through the fact that one day I’ll have to do life without both of them.  The memory of rubbing my dad’s feet while he was delirious from pain medication shows me a sample of the role reversal that children and parents experience, if we’re all lucky enough to make it to that challenging stage of life.  Processing these moments is difficult because it brings me nose to nose with my greatest fears – seeing a loved one suffer, losing a loved one prematurely, and loss of control.   

Resilience is a little pearl inside the oyster of grief, waiting to be discovered if you’re brave enough to look inside.

I started this blog in an attempt to share my own growth in real time, hoping that it may inspire others to embark on their own quest for self-discovery.  For months I assumed that my seeming inability to write was born of a resistance to be vulnerable with you.  I now know that it was a fear of being vulnerable with myself.  But I did it, and as it always goes with fear, my imagination was far worse than reality.  I did not uncover anything that I couldn’t handle.  Working through my trauma did not further traumatize me – it liberated me.  It allowed me to release a few pieces of grief, and I continue to chip away at it daily.  Being brave enough to move through this hard chapter of life (and not around it) gave me a precious little pearl of resilience.