Resiliency

How do you define resiliency? Where do you see this manifested in your life? When was a moment you recognized your own strength, endurance, patience, or healing? I don’t think I considered myself resilient until recently. Throughout my life I have constantly been told things like “your life is a lifetime movie” or “you’ve experienced more in your life than most people twice your age”. I typically laugh and say things like “yeah, I know” or “yeah, you’re telling me”. I didn’t put into perspective the amount of trauma inducing situations I had experienced until I sat down and started writing about them. I’m sure most people who have been through things also don’t realize it. So, Let’s talk about it. I was raised by a woman who told me over and over again “just roll with the punches”. I know that to a certain point those are words I still live by. But because of the stress and trauma, it has morphed into waiting for the next shoe to drop, waiting for the next bad thing, always being prepared for the floor to collapse beneath me. That’s me “rolling with the punches”, If I expect the worst then I am prepared for the worst.

It’s exhausting to live this way, I am constantly tired, not from life but from the waiting, the constant freight or flight response surging through my body, for the constant anxiety of “the waiting”, the constant fear that at any moment the other shoe is going to drop. It makes enjoying life, living in the moment, and taking things as they come nearly impossible. Don’t get me wrong there are moments I enjoy, there are times I am happy, but behind my smiles and my excitement there is always prepared anxiety. Recently, I have realized that this is in direct correlation to the constantly waiting for something to happen when I was a child, waiting for something bad to happen to my mom, waiting for her and her boyfriend to break up, waiting for us to move again, waiting for the next time I was grounded for nothing, waiting for the next time I’d come to her with something and she wouldn’t believe me, just constantly waiting.I know a lot of what happened when I was younger was just my mom trying to find her way, just a single mom with her own trauma and issues struggling to get it right. However, it doesn’t make It any easier to deal with and I’ve been told most of my life I shouldn’t have had to (deal with it I mean). People are right I shouldn’t have had too, but I was all my mom had, and with that came a relationship that made me her friend and not just her daughter.

When I got older the friendship is what I cherished, because I felt like her fucked up being my mom so bad that we were past that kind of relationship. It took me a long time to acknowledge that I didn’t deserve what happened to me, and that getting to where I am today took hard work. It took a huge amount of resiliency on my part, a huge amount of determination, a huge amount of strength. I’ve been knocked down more times than I have succeeded in life, yet I continue to get up and try again. That is resiliency, despite all the odds stacked against me, I have achieved goals. That is resiliency. I have surpassed where I thought I would be right now, that is resiliency. I am learning to give myself grace when it comes to the things I have yet to achieve, the things that I wish I had completed already and am just now beginning, because those years I should have been succeeding, those years I should have been completing goals, I was succeeding in other parts of my life. I was in recovery, I was having children and being the best mom I could be, I was working full time to support my kids. In every other way of my life, I have been growing, and that is resiliency. I recognize my resiliency in those moments when the other shoe drops, in those moments where I feel like I literally cannot make it another day, yet somehow, I do. I recognize it in the moments of reminiscing on the days I was in active addiction and knowing I am thriving in recovery. I notice it in my kids’ faces when I am exhausted from life, but still make sure they are smiling. My resiliency is everywhere. 

So is yours! 

Katlin Elaine