Is my invisible superpower resilience?
Why my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness.
I’ve been writing a lot about resilience lately. What it means to have it, how to foster it and what I’ve learned over the last few years having gone through more ups and downs than feels both fair or necessary.
To say that life has been a rollercoaster—and not always a fun one—is an understatement. But my invisible superpower is undoubtedly my ability to draw on my resilience, even when the barrel has an irreparable leak.
On the one hand, while I am proud that broadly speaking, there’s no question I am a resilient person, I admit that sometimes, I still find it difficult to stomach when other people use it in conversation with me. I can rationalise that their empathy comes from a good place, that they are perhaps as surprised as I am at my ability to find resilience even in the most trying of circumstances. But as I’ve written about before, sometimes I don’t want to be resilient. Or at least, I don’t want my resilience to be the trait that trumps my grief/anger/fear in any given situation. And sometimes I just want permission to fall to pieces in front of someone else.
So what I’m trying to do at the moment is channel what I’ve learned into a piece of work that might provide some insight into where true resilience really comes from and how it can shape the person we become. I’m also hopeful that one day, this piece of work might become a book of some description. While it terrifies me to share this truth out loud—on some level I’m hoping that it might also propel me forward, providing some external motivation to see the project through.
Until then, I’m just going to continue to do my best to show up here whenever I feel I have the space to do so. And if it's something that resonates, perhaps share a few excerpts here from time to time, too.
