Resilience

I finished reading, The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable Life of a 109-Year-Old Man, by David Von Drehle. The book is written as part biography of Dr. Charlie White, the 109-year-old man, and part life advice for David Von Drehle's own children when they grow up. The theme is resilience and, to a lesser extent, resourcefulness, which was definitely displayed by Dr. White as he adapted to 109 years of world wide, earth-shattering changes. A very fascinating life, and I highly recommend this book.

It got me thinking about my own circumstances, with this unexpected, shocking divorce my daughter is going through. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but sometimes it does, indeed, kill you. 

Resilience.  The concept struck me as the exact thing demanded in this season of life.

I ordered two books on the subject, one of which is, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom For Living A Better Life, by Eric Greitens. I'm only four chapters into it, but it's very interesting. He wrote it as a series of letters to his friend and former SEAL team member.

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship, and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience.

A couple days ago I got a health warning from my Apple Watch. The health app was tracking my steps and weight, and it had detected a new trend. Warning!

Yes, I had become a bit paralyzed, doing the bare minimum, and putting everything I have into my daughter and grandson. Yes, I had put on a few pounds, not really caring about eating healthy. But life got complicated. 

The flowers I had purchased in June, the month this started, remain unplanted.

Hey, at least they're still alive!

The Rio I over-wintered last year is thriving. I have several pots of it around the house.  Kudos to last year me!

That's a good example of taking advantage of the better seasons in life. They may come back to bless you in the harder ones.

For the last couple of weeks I have been moving again, playing the guitar, and eating healthier.  One of the meals my daughter found on Pinterest, and we cooked together, is Honey Siracha Salmon Bowls. We're making it a hobby to find and cook healthy meals now.  That's a good start towards rebuilding.

Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us, or it can make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.

Yesterday, I had a lesson with Tweed down at the park with my trainer Regina. She and I have continued to meet every Friday, through all of this, but Tweed broke a splint about a month ago, and so we spent two of those weeks evaluating and coming up with a healing / resting plan. Since he has been sound again, we have started work.

The last time we met, I was really out of it: stressed, tired, and doing only the minimum. Regina sensed it and didn't push us too hard. I didn't even mount up that day, because my head and heart weren't in it. 

Yesterday I was fully present and, SURPRISE, so was Tumbleweed. It's amazing how sensitive they are to our moods. We had a wonderful lesson where he progressed quickly through the round pen work and right to saddle work. 

We're still working on vertical flexion, softness, and when to release.  We worked in the round pen, and then she had me do the same work out on the trails and around obstacles both at walk and trot. The ground was uneven enough that he had to pay attention and carry himself, but not so uneven that he tripped. Regina was really happy with Tumbleweed. She thought his attitude and willingness was just wonderful.

I left the lesson very happy.  

The great thing about being horsewomen is that even when life is thrown off the rails, and all you want to do is sit around, or hide away in your fear, the barn is calling you, the horses are calling you, the relationship is demanding that you show up and take care--and that ends up being a huge blessing over and over and over again.

When people hear the word resilience, they often think of bouncing back. If you look up resilience in the Merriam Webster dictionary one of the first definitions, you’ll find "this capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation, especially if the strain is caused by compressive stresses, also called elastic resilience." Resilience as elasticity. 

Life‘s reality is that we cannot bounce back. We cannot bounce back because we cannot go back in time to the people we used to be. The parent who loses a child, never bounces back. What’s done, cannot be undone, and some of what life does to us is harsh. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences, they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives. In time, people find that great calamity met with great spirit can create great strength.

Healing is a long process. I wish it wasn't.

Even though I know that seasons like this often result in a better place on the other side, you still have to do the work of getting to the other side. Dr. Charlie White lived to be 109, and probably would have lived longer, except that he was ready to go on his birthday. He said he wanted to live to see 109, and he did. 

One of the most naturally resilient people I have ever known is my husband. He could write his own book on it. He has spent the last 20 years devoted to accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. Like most resilient people, he is a man of action and intellectual strength. Every day when he has free time, he is out in the barn happily working on the tack room. (When he has down time, he is reading a book.)

I believe there is a part of our brain (and spirit) that experiences happiness, and we can practice tapping into and activating it. We can become experts at activating it and living in that space longer. 

There is another part, however, that is pulling us the other way--toward sadness, fear, bitterness, loneliness, anger, and anxiety. I suppose that is a survival extinct gone awry. 

I'm starting to see life as a battle between those two existences. One path leads to death, the other to life. Living forever is not a big priority for me, but living better is. If, after this season, I have come closer to that goal, this will have been yet another crisis point turned into an overall benefit, even a blessing.

I'll write more about resilience in the coming months, and as I get further along in my study and experience.