Resilience

Merriam Webster defines resilience as the capability to recover or to adjust to misfortune or change.

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Sometimes I believe one's ability to cope with grief depends on their own determination to just get up everyday and face the world. To stand in the deep shambles of a life crushed into a million teeny tiny shards, and declared : I don't know how or when, but somehow I'm going to survive this . Everyday is spent struggling to put those teeny tiny pieces of the past back together whole, until you realize you can't. There isn't any way to put it back together the way it once was.

***

So the days and months and even years are spent feeling troubled, resentful, in deep sorrow and outrage. There are rages against injustice of the realities, feeling deceived out of what could have, should have might have been. In all that pain, still one does not give up. There is still the desire to try and make sense of it all, until in a moment of clarity you see you can't put it back together the way it was. But you have to take what's left over in the rubble and turn it into something different.

***

So again you begin to rebuild, despite set backs,
failures and low spirits,
 you keep going.

When you have a terrible day, you still get up and go through the next one.

When you see images that bring tears of sadness, you cry, it's OK.

When friends & family let you down, you forgive them.

When life seems worthless and pointless, you hold out hope

that you will feel different,

with time.

There is no question each day you will feel weak and alone.

Maybe even believing you are the only one who feels this way.

You're not.

You're not alone,
and you're not alone in feeling the way you do.

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But you keep picking up the pieces and rebuilding.

You are rebuilding an entire world, your world.

But what you fail to acknowledge is that each day,

each one is a act of resilience, against grief,

and it demonstrates the immense strength you possess.

You will stumble, yes, and you will fall.

You may even buckle completely.

But as long as you get up and keep trying you will grow 

stronger.

It may not feel like it but you will.

And one day,

it will not feel as bad and then you'll reach a tomorrow

where resilience will win.

***

Abby

7/1/99

8/12/13