Reigniting a Sense of Resilience

At the end of each chapter in Julia Cameron’s book It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again, she asks six questions.  Two of them deal with ‘aha’ moments and experiencing synchronicity.

This week, those two things hit me at the same time.

Last week, I discussed how I’d gone to a Toastmasters open house to check it out.  Well… this week I went back and got called upon to participate in the dreaded two-minute table topic. The question I was given was, ‘What was important to you at twenty, and are those things still important in your life?’

I actually started out really strong, but, after one minute and twenty-six seconds (you’re timed to the second!) I froze.

With only the five seconds it took to walk from my seat to the podium to prepare, I started to talk about how apt the question was. Only a few weeks ago, I’d been examining myself at twenty in Julia’s course.  It was a time of huge change in my life, and as I spoke to that room of strangers, I realised what was important in my life then was that I had hope for the future and resilience in the present as I faced challenge after challenge.

And although I froze 3/4 of the way through my talk, that was because that aha moment hit me mid-speech.  What was important to me at 20 is just as important now, especially given what I have had to face in the past few years since my husband left me; hope for the future and resilience in the moment.

Both hope and resilience waver quite badly at times – I spent Friday on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, then Saturday feeling sorry for my poor back which had been contorted on the sofa all Friday and needed some Ibuprofen to make it happy again –  but it’s Sunday now, and the hope and, I believe, resilience are back.

The first days, weeks, months and even years after being abandoned are awful.  Just awful.  But if you keep putting one foot in front of the other – that’s resilience.  And as you walk, no matter how dark it seems at first, try to turn your face towards the sun.  Do that in whatever way works for you – gratitude journals, hanging out with friends and family, going for walks etc. That’s where you’ll find your hope again.