The resilience needed for life
It is with great sadness to share the news that I’ve lost my mum.
It's been an incredible shock for all of us. She had returned home from hospital the week before after a hip revision, finally pain free.
An independent, strong woman (in case you wondered where I got that from!) who had moved to be closer to me, less than 2 years ago. I will be forever grateful for these past 20 months when I could see her several times a week and pop in for a cup a tea and a KitKat after work to talk about anything and everything.
Losing mum has also churned up memories of losing my dad when I was 40, and I’ve noticed how little I actually remember of this time. That period of my life was traumatic for us all and there are parts of that time that are blacked out; redacted so that I could function at the time.
This redaction is one way our brain copes during a traumatic experience.
When something is too big to process in real time, the body floods you with stress hormones to keep you moving, talking, holding it together, and the part of the brain that normally files experience away as memory gets bypassed.
So instead of a clear thread of what happened, you're left with fragments - a smell, a sound, a single image - and a lot of blank space where the rest should be.
What happened afterwards was when it went wrong for me. Instead of dealing with and processing my grief once we were through the worst of it, I zipped myself up and got on with life. We had two young children and I had a coaching business to get back up and running again, and I didn’t feel I had time to break down; I was afraid to lose control.
Two years later, I got ill.
A toxic bomb of stress, inflammation and peri-menopause hormones from pushing through and getting on with life. It took several more years to see that there wasn’t a magic cure to fix me, and it was only when I began a journey of learning how to rest, restore and regulate my nervous system that I was able to re-balance my health.
Fast forward to today, and I feel my reaction to my mum’s death has been very different.
Yes, I’m totally heartbroken.
But I am dealing with and processing my grief very differently this time around.
I’m being present; noticing the bunting and photos flapping in the wind around the pub garden at the wake will be a core memory for a long time. It made me smile and think how much my mum would have loved this family gathering.
I allow myself to feel all the emotions; allowing tears to fall with whoever I speak with. I won’t apologise for my grief nor wipe my tears away.
I use dance to shake out my stress; headphones on and playing The Prodigy’s Firestarter to get me freaking out in the garden for just a few minutes is enough to release any tension build up.
I scream loudly in the car and sing along to my Angry Woman playlist; again just enough to release the steam that builds up.
I rest; taking opportunities to lay down between the enormity of tasks we have had organising the funeral and now going into probate.
And so many more things that I am probably not even conscious of.
I share all this with you because how we deal with what life throws at us matters. I am not doing this perfectly and I’m not following any kind of step-by-step process, but I am reacting to life now through and from my body, rather than zipping myself up and pushing through.
Because that's what I've learned resilience actually is.
It isn't holding it together. It’s not a stiff upper lip. It isn't getting back to normal quickly, or being the strong one, or not crying in front of people. All those things only lead to problems further down the line; health problems, anger issues, failing trust in yourself or others.
Real resilience is having the capacity to fall apart, fully and safely, and trust yourself to come back together again.
This is the resilience I've learnt I’ve needed for life.
I’m done with pushing through.
What about you?
When life has hit you hard, have you pushed through? Or have you got your own version of dance, scream, rest.
Either way, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below or email me at karen@serotina.co.uk
Thank you for reading,
Karen Skidmore
Reiki Master, Somatic & Sound Healing Practitioner
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