23rd July 2026
‘When Life gives you lemons, make lemonade and hang out with someone whose life gave them vodka’. Ana Huang
Occassionally I feel brittle. In those moments I suspect even a delicate mental shove and I would fracture ungracefully. Or at other times I envision the elastic holding me together snapping with a twang. I’ve not managed to or likely haven’t dared to visualise my shattered psychological state or the disarray which would ensue. But suffice to say, those moments feel like points of no return and it wouldn’t be pretty i’m sure. Feeling overwhelmed, disturbed or broken are unfriendly territories we should do our best to bypass. Generally it is thought you do this by building resilience.
We may not always term it resilience – perhaps it is back bone, learning to fail and rise up again, running with the punches or knock backs. Whatever we choose to name it, the practice expects when life deals a tough hand we do not let it de-rail us. We roll with the buffeting. But. We are unsure if some people are naturally more resilient than others. Because resilience is not measurable, it’s not visible. It resides inside of us. We can debate if resilience is a muscle or a flow. A single state or fluid? But it isn’t something easily taught – you can’t tell someone to be resilient or pull themselves together and watch the magic happen. However, I have observed resilience or obvious lack of is dormant until called upon. So in a Catch-22, we don’t actually know we are resilient until we are punched in the face. Maybe don’t try that.
I notice usually when we talk about resilience it is in relation to the young. We suspect it is lacking in the youth of today and some of us have strong opinions as to its development. Other than in deliberations of the times of war, I do not hear much about the resiliency of the older generation. Which is curious because we need to be as much as the younger. In recent days I have noted the gentle unfurling or slow dissipation of resilience; in situations where it is almost as if it has been un-flexed for a long while. Watching my mother tortuously build a semblance of happiness after my fathers passing; hearing friends voicing thoughts on the disappointment their lives have become now we are middle aged, others who visibly lay bare their loneliness and incapacity to move forth and yet others ploughing through one adverse event after another. Accepting or learning to cope when adversity, hurt criss-crosses your path spans generational divides.
There is another aspect of resilience it is worth teasing out. Often when we are asking someone to be resilient it encompasses moving and looking forward, fighting, solution finding. And that might be the right way to recover for some knock backs. But we should also recognise sometimes resilience mustn’t be about any of those things. Sometimes it is just about being and letting time do its work. As Megan Devine, a Psychotherapist says in this quote : ‘Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried’. Not everything deserves or improves with a quick turnaround or action. Grief, illness, sadness are cases in point or perhaps this is true of all mental blows? I overuse the phrase ‘be kind to yourself’ because being gentle and patient with ourselves is underrated healing and can be a path to restoration…eventually. As I ponder further I’m even more drawn to this approach because my internal resilience emerges from an ability to re-order thoughts once the grenade has done its worst. The revamping of my reflections taming the rampant instability. Encouraging logic and maybe acceptance to emerge.
I’m in a good place today and most days but it is not a feeling I take for granted. I’ve no idea if I will be when a day’s carnage arrives to do it’s worst. But it’s at that point, punching someone else in the face might do wonders for my resilience…..
Curiosity and the rascal 