We all have stories about difficult moments as we do this thing called life. These trying moments test’s one’s sanity, patience, and tolerance as life is disrupted, and completely turned around.
During those moments you seem to lose life’s bearing, energy and are still expected to nurse your pain and heartache.
So how can we keep sane during those difficult moments? I don’t know if there is a specific answer to that but like many of us, it’s about pulling yourself up, to try to stay above the waters.
When I was about 10 years old my lovely playful life and school life suddenly came to a halt. I had just had major surgery and one of the directives from the doctor was to ensure minimal movement because the wound needed to heal.
I was also under strict instructions from my no-nonsense mother to stay put. The pain and big wound were also a great reminder that I had to stay in one room and wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Prior to the surgery, I was one of those children who left the house early in the morning, when my parents went to work and only came back for bathroom and lunch breaks. But things had suddenly changed and for a few weeks, my world would revolve around the bedroom and bathroom. It was quite hard to stare at the four walls all day with nothing to do. And in case you are wondering, there were no luxurious TVs in the bedroom or books to read.
It was hard staying in that room trying to figure out what to do. As days went by I found myself trying to recreate my life in that bedroom. The window became the only thing that attached me to “my world”. The days were spent near that window observing people going to and from work, watching kids go to school, or playing in the neighborhood. I would cheer as kids played hide and seek and occasionally a friend would try to bribe me to tell them where the others were hiding as I could see everyone from my view; the “best view in the house”. That was a great reminder that although I was not in the field playing like the other kids that I had an advantage over any of them. With time I started getting accustomed to my new routine; my new normal. Then there were days when the neighborhood was dead silent and I had to find something else to do. I eventually found some scrap paper and started writing and doing some drawing (yes I sketched some red carpet outfits on scrap paper, but that is a story for another day). God knows what I was writing but whatever it was, it seemed to give me an escape from those 4 walls.
Building emotional resilience during difficult times
I had learned to create a new normal with the curveball that life had thrown at me. I got accustomed to this new life of being an “observer and cheerleader”. And weeks after recovering I would still sit at the window and gaze before dashing out the door; it had finally become part of my new normal. And it was during one of those “peaking” moments that a neighbor’s fence caught fire and I alerted my parents and we all ran outside to be part of the “fire fighting team”. The girl who had learned to “enjoy” sitting at the window was now “saving” a moment.
Difficult moments are never easy but they teach us lessons that we could not have learned given any other alternative. Another incident that forced me to learn to shift my thoughts and create a new normal was when an injury left me out of the norm for 2 months. I was in pain and could only attend to minimal tasks albeit with a lot of struggle. Circumstances had forced me to create a new normal. The positive thing that came out from this difficult time was that due to the time accorded to me by the universe I had the time to work on one of my passions and that is how I ended up creating this blog. I found time to learn from Youtube and various groups. Amidst my new normal, I still had to attend to my wounds and aches in order to regain my stability and health.
What are the morals of these stories? That life will have difficult times but we need to ask ourselves if there is a way of readjusting during those difficult times as you nurse your aches and pains. I like how Dr. Davis (2018) talks about emotional resilience during difficult times, that you are the one in control of yourself as you cannot change the world around you and in order to forge ahead you will need “……to adjust your attitude, shift your thoughts, and create new dreams by being flexible”.
Reference
Davis T (Sep 4, 2018). Emotional resilience: 9 ways to be resilient in tough times. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/click-here-happiness/201809/emotional-resilience-9-ways-be-resilient-in-tough-times