Life is messy.
Life is messy.The unpredictable rock bottom of trauma, transition, or just the insidious status quo can creep up like the Kraken and leave you and your life in pieces.
“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood.”
– Margaret Atwood
Over the course of six months, everything I thought I knew went out the window after a hellish divorce, assault, wrongful arrest, and type 1 diabetes diagnosis.
I was apparently saving up my bad juju for one big spree. You can read my story here.
It’s easy to ruminate on the injustice or the sense of hopelessness that comes with the messy unknown in between who we were, and who we are now after the impact.
But even while we move through anger and grief in the midst of adversity, the seeds of resilience and utter transformation are germinating.
As a psychotherapist, I found my own trauma to be an opportunity to observe a case from the inside out. I set out to apply every intervention I had shared with patients over the past decade – my own N of 1 research experiment, which continues to this day.
Resilience requires mindful intentionality.
Life is inherently painful and unfair, and we can also train every day to relieve our own suffering after the storm.
Whatever it is or was – divorce, cancer, a loss, or a reconsidering of direction after checking into a cubicle for 963 weekdays in a row – it’s time to take ownership over this one life you have right now, root into meaning, and build up the fortitude that can carry you though the pain to come.