Resilience

"Instead of dispensing energy, collect it until you feel full. Your resilience is not something you can cause, it's a state to call forth from the depths of your being." Elena Brower

 As I stood on the dock watching the array of colors arrive in the rainbow overhead, I marveled at the consistency of this color phenomenon.  It arrives, in the same way, each time, presenting the same seven colors with the same vibrancy as the last. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, are the same colors we associate with the Chakras or meridians in the body. Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, and Third Eye. Again this intermix of nature shows up with our environment and our being, holding so closely to the same rhythms.    I watched it become a complete arc and then fade to half before it left the sky completely.   We all know the symbolism behind the rainbow showing up after a storm as a sign of hope, sometimes strength, and definitely to solidify our faith in something greater than ourselves.   In the same way that when all of the meridians of the body align we witness our own strength, our ability to be hopeful, and our wonder in the divinity around and within us.    It was divine timing for me to witness the mystery of the rainbow.  I was away just for the night after a long stint with Covid.  It went through the entire house and had us looking after the one who had surrendered, before surrendering ourselves to the virus as well.   I was so grateful for the protection that the vaccines had provided, and amazed that we could all still feel so miserably ill for the length of time that we did.  It would seem that our energy would be the last thing to return and while we were still waiting and looking for a way to nourish that process along, we headed to our sweet spot near the ocean, to the dock and my rainbow. 

 I am always looking for the messages around me that help guide and build my relationship with resiliency.   Thinking about how non-resilient illness had made me feel, and seeing it as the dress rehearsal that it is for when the rug gets pulled out from under us over and over again if we are privileged enough to have a long life. Thinking too about the setbacks and spiraling of everyone who navigates the storms, inevitable losses, tragedies, and traumas that life presents, and wonder if our messages about resilience may be adding to the burden that others feel.  Most of us can sense or at least can't deny the general uneasiness of the world right now. So many of our systems, structures, ideologies and historical events have been challenged or transformed, and we are left wondering about truth.  It may only be my perspective but it feels like our familiar landing or take-off pad has been removed or just harder to reach to steady ourselves at times.  If this makes any sense to you, you may have given some thought to my next question which is how do we redefine resiliency to be inclusive of this experience of uncertainty in both present and future circumstances? It seems easy to get swallowed by it all and not be able to feel resilient in the way it is often presented.     Resiliency is referenced as our ability to bounce back after hardship or difficulty. How to react and respond appropriately when challenged. We judge ourselves as being resilient or not based on whether we think we responded or reacted appropriately in situations and often feel shame or guilt about our inability to mask or control our natural responses to hardship. 

I wonder about my rainbow and where it was until it showed up to my privileged eye.  When you spend most of your life with children, it is difficult not to think like one,  so I was embellishing the idea of the rainbow dropping out, giving in, surrendering to something, and then when it is ready and feeling like it has the energy and right circumstance, it begins again, coming forward with the same tenacity and intensity of colors as before, demonstrating true resilience.    Although minor illness is something with a beginning and ending, it aids in understanding how we maneuver through challenges that knock us down, knock the wind out of us or make us question situations and circumstances.    We all start off knowing that illness is coming, aches and pains, and obvious shifts in mood, energy, and sleep patterns. We start to resist these signs and do our natural remedies, change what we consume, and adjust our sleep patterns in hopes of not being taken down by the illness.   Very quickly we realize when chills, fevers, nausea, and persistent coughs begin that our resistance is futile and that we will need to surrender, not to give up but to actually heal. In this case,  surrendering means nourishing ourselves, coming full stop, and allowing rest and sleep to dominate.   This exemplifies what real resilience looks like to me.  Listening to our bodies, respecting our emotions, and having compassion for our actions and reactions to hardship.  It is not about the bouncing back. I actually have never bounced back from anything but rather tiptoed, lingered, meandered, and sometimes even crawled back from any number of setbacks in life.  I wonder if this makes me any less resilient than someone who powers through, and fights their body or spirit through an illness, grief, loss, changes, or tragedy?  Telling ourselves or others, even inadvertently, that to be resilient, you must gain control, manage or deny our natural rhythms is a travesty. The message of resiliency needs to be offered as I recently heard it referred to as flowing with the natural process of letting go, surrendering to and acknowledging, and then when and only when we have given ourselves this time our own body, mind, and spirit needs to process and heal can we begin again.  Maybe with a slight pivot in direction, in the understanding of ourselves,  in healing actions, thoughts or words. Possibly with a clearer perspective,  apologies or next-right practices.   We cannot give a timeline to our own or someone else's bouncing back, moving on,  letting go,  that makes us comfortable, and expect that if this is not met then there is no resiliency. A resilient person can and does respond inappropriately to other's standards at times, we are all just a myriad of our own experiences reflecting back at us.  Even if we have done the work, the preventative practices, and filled our cups, life happens. The difference is that we take the time to acknowledge and compassionately embrace this learning for ourselves.  Life can plow us under, catch our breath, and rattle our resolve, but resilience is what we have inside that reveals when the best we can do right now may be nothing.    When we can allow ourselves the time with the feelings, and the enormity of the circumstance. When we can rest at the bottom after we have allowed ourselves to fall.   Resilience is knowing what is right for our timeline,  to let the universe tell us to stop and in the same way, we honor the good moments of life with ritual and resolve, celebration and ceremony, we find ways to do the same for our losses and uncertainties, setbacks and hardships.

Mostly we don't know and sometimes we think we do and that makes things complicated for us and others because thinking we know what works for anyone other than ourselves and even that is a series of trials and mishaps, is where the echo of resiliency becomes the burden.  If we are here, if we are witnessing, gathering ourselves, refilling, refueling after the drop to our knees or our collapse under the weight, we are resilient.  Just like other colors, beyond the seven we see of the rainbow, are there, so too is our resiliency, even if we don't see it at times or it doesn't look the way we thought it would.  Like the rainbow, we reemerge carrying with us all of the mystery, hope, and humanity we continue to excavate from within the depths of our humanness and our skill in surrendering to the inevitable and very human, falls. Indeed the rainbow is the promise. The promise we will find our colors in our own way and on our own time and we will share them along with the mystery of our continued resilience.