Resilience

 

RESILIENCE

Holding on to something good and clawing your way towards it. That’s how Linda described resilience yesterday, struggling in bed, in immense agony, when I asked her.

She spoke about the destruction of illness….but still building a life for yourself. I wish I could remember all she said.

I did make a note of this though:

“Seek in yourself until you find it, you can’t just pull yourself together. You have to find your own innate well spring of goodness, love, something that will keep you going against all the odds.”

I write this because that much loved, ancient symbol of resilience, the daffodil, is flowering, right now in our garden. I am a hungry man, all this harrowing winter I have been longing for its appearance.

I wonder how others would describe “resilience “ in the face of long term, chronic, severe illness and disability?

Surely not in terms of “well, pull yourself together, change your thoughts and just get on with it, won’t you?”, which is probably how the rest of the world, who don’t want to know, sees it.