During this pandemic, I’ve read many ridiculous articles about how resilience means “bouncing through” our obstacles — as though riding out this shitstorm is life on a trampoline. These bandaids of advice do nothing to encourage people to look for the deep healing they will need if they truly want to be resilient in 2022.
To say we bounce back from adversity implies we ping back and forth until we return to the person we were before. But once we find ourselves on solid ground after experiencing a crisis, we know that we are different. We have been through something significant; we’ve seen battle and have survived. We have the scars to prove it.
We don’t bounce back; we move through.
Resilience is the ability to adapt to our circumstances. When creatures adapt to their environment, it’s because they can leave something behind and learn something new. In short, they change.
We’ve seen a lot of adversity over the past few years, and it has begun to beat us down. It’s no secret that we are becoming less psychologically resilient. We are facing a growing mental health problem. Stress levels are through the roof — rates of anxiety and depression are at all-time highs.
While this may sound grim, it’s also important to remember that studies show a…
