Stop Practicing. Start Living

Resilience.  The ability to “bounce back,” to recover from difficult times.  We all have our own understanding of what resilience means in general and our own experience of what it means to us personally. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about resilience.  Mostly because I was preparing to do a workshop on Parental Resilience, one of the five Protective Factors (learn about all FIVE here).  In reality, I’ve really been thinking about it because recently I’ve been through some difficult times.  I had to face the hard reality that I have been “practicing” resilience but I have not been “living” resilience.

I was giving a lot of lip service to living resiliently but it was a false life I was living.  I was resilient on the outside; getting things done on my “to do” list, moving forward in my business, getting the kids where they needed to be, exercising and eating healthy.  But my insides, the deepest parts inside me, were wilting.  I was going through the motions but I wasn’t living.

Just as a rubber band doesn’t return to exactly its same shape after being stretched, we don’t either.  Our “shape” changes after challenging times.  Sometimes those changes are small and sometimes they are big.  Trying to fit back into our old life does not recognize nor respect our growth and the strength and courage it took to get through our pain.  Glennon Doyle Melton, founder of Momastery and one of my favorite writers/bloggers, expresses it beautifully here – I Need To Tell You Something.

I recognize that often I wanted to fit my new “shape” back into my old, comfortable, familiar life.  Squeezing myself back into that old life didn’t allow for the depth and width of the opportunity for growth that practicing resilience provides. 

As our pediatrician once lovingly advised our anxiety-prone daughter to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” I am working toward the “comfort” of uncomfortableness with the goal of allowing my new shape to flow, to live and to thrive.