Cultivating Resiliency

As a psychotherapist by vocation, I give a lot of thought to the idea of resiliency.  I think about what protective factors have contributed to one person being able to tolerate the intolerable and the other person being destroyed by it.

Two women whom I admire greatly whose lives reflect this critical aspect of resiliency are the recently late author, poet, performer, and activist Dr. Maya Angelou and jazz singer and song writer Billie Holiday.

Dr. Angelou was born Marguerite (my great-grandmother’s first name too) Annie Johnson in 1928 and lived to the ripe ol’ age of 86. Ms. Holiday was born 13 years earlier in 1915 as Eleanora Fagan, but died at the young age of 44 due to consequences of many years of drug and alcohol abuse.  Ms. Holiday was actually handcuffed to her hospital bed at the time of her death due to legal charges.  Though both amazing women, the ending of each of their lives was drastically different, one ceremonious and honorable, the other tragic and sad.

However, the start of each woman’s life did have several similarities.  Both women were African American and lived during a time of potent and blatant racism in the United States and abroad.  Both were born to young mothers who were ill-equipped to care for young children.  Both women suffered sexual trauma as young girls, Dr. Angelou was 8 years-old and Ms. Holiday was 11.  Despite these challenges however, both women led extraordinary and creative lives full of numerous accomplishments that continued well after their lives ended.

They actually briefly met each other in the year 1957.  Dr. Angelou described this meeting in her autobiography The Heart of a Woman, which is the 4^th book in her six-part memoir, and Ms. Holiday died not long after this meeting.

I find it meaningful to consider the role of resiliency in each of these women’s lives because it strikes me as such a predictable indicator for quality of life, which for me is an aspect of the spiritual life.

There are many definitions of resiliency, this is the one that I like the most:  Resilience is the ability to work with adversity in such a way that one comes through it unharmed or even better for the experience.

A few years ago I was giving a lot of attention and intention to the cultivation of resiliency.  I was going through some difficult things in my personal life, and it seemed like a helpful strategy to engage in practices that might give me a thicker skin to help me maneuver through the challenges at the time.  I even went online and googled “How do I become more resilient?” And I found the list outlined below.  It was written in the context of a sermon by a Unitarian Universalist Minister Barbara Myers.

She said resilient people practice the following:

1. Suffering from loss or illness will happen in life; it is inevitable. Resilient people are able to manage strong feelings and impulses such losses engender.

2. Resilient people have empathy for others.

3. Resilient people cultivate relationships that create love and trust, provide role models, and offer encouragement and reassurance.

4. Resilient people can communicate their needs effectively.

5. Resilient people can ask for help; they can refrain from gossip, or harmful statements about others; they can listen to what others are saying to them.

6. Resilient people have developed self-discipline.

7. Resilient people have the capacity to make develop goals and realistic plans and take steps to carry them out.

8. Resilient people have problem solving skills.

9. Resilient people live an authentic life.

10. Resilient people believe in what they do for a living, and do it with joy. They don't say they believe one thing and do something entirely different every day at work.

11.  Resilient people have developed the art of setting boundaries.

12. Resilient people  know how to say "No" when they realize it would be unwise to do something that is asked of them.

13. Resilient people learn how to avoid repeating behavior that has negative outcomes. Some people call this "rewriting negative scripts."

14.  Resilient people maintain a hopeful outlook; In any situation, they see the glass half full.

15. Resilient people have the ability to make positive meanings out of experiences.

16. Resilient people avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems - change how they interpret them, looking for opportunities for self-discovery.

17. Resilient people have flexibility.

18. Resilient people accept that change is a part of living; They have an uncanny ability to improvise.

19. Resilient people can admit to having vulnerability; It is important to have a humble attitude toward life.

20. Resilient people have learned how to harness the saving grace of humor which can provide escape, relaxation, a change in perspective, and detachment from problems.

21. Resilient people have a positive view of themselves and confidence in their strengths, abilities, talent and creativity.

22. Resilient people have positive self-esteem.

23. Resilient people take care of their bodies.

24. Resilient people engage in activities that they enjoy and find relaxing. They exercise regularly. Taking care of oneself helps to keep one's mind and body primed to deal with situations that require resilience.

25. Resilient people have an active spiritual life.

26. Resilient people engage in a spiritual practice that has meaning for them: Maybe it is meditation, journaling, prayer, or ritual.

I have to tell you I love this list and have read it many times.  And finding it within a UU minister’s sermon was just a serendipitous bonus because I identify with this faith but had not even typed in “UU” as part of my internet search; it seems the virtual universe still provided me with a UU perspective on this spiritual topic.

To consider again the lives of Dr. Angelou and Ms. Holiday against this list of resiliency practices, it is not hard to see why biographies and narratives about each woman describe Dr. Angelou as joyful, hopeful and proud versus Ms. Holiday who is depicted as depressed, cynical and self-destructive.

I suppose from a Buddhist standpoint you might look at each woman’s resiliency from a karmic perspective, which quite simply is cause and effect.

Jack Kornfield says in his book A Path with Heart  “the law of karma describes the way that cause and effect govern the patterns that repeat themselves throughout all life. Karma means that nothing arises by itself. Thus our life is a series of interrelated patterns. The Buddhists say that understanding this is enough to live wisely in the world.”

If you think about the resiliency of Dr. Angelou and Ms. Holiday (or yours or mine) from this very simple but elegant perspective of cause and effect, you can’t help but say “of course.”

Of course Dr. Angelou found it healing to live with her grandmother for many years after being raped.  During that time she described being safe and  unconditionally loved.  Though she suffered from Selective Mutism (choosing not to speak) following the sexual trauma and separation from her mother, Dr. Angelou’s grandmother and teacher (who was the first to introduce her to poetry, Shakespeare and literature) met her just where she was with radical acceptance. I believe these relationships and experiences helped shape Dr. Angelou into an individual who believed she was what Social Researcher and Author Brene Brown calls “worthy of love and belonging,” which is a critical element to resiliency.

Ms. Holiday on the other hand had no such experience. After being sexually assaulted, possibly not for the first time, at age 11, Ms. Holiday was separated from all family and put in a Catholic Reform School for girls. This was her second time being placed in this reform school. When released, still at age 11 and being placed with extended family, she began to run errands for a brothel.  If we follow the universal laws of cause and effect, it is not surprising then to learn that by the time Ms. Holiday was not quite 14, she herself was prostituting her body in the same brothel where her mother was doing the same.  It seems Ms. Holiday was never able to escape the pattern of abuse and neglect, including of self.  Resiliency was not taught, modeled or cultivated in Ms. Holiday’s life, and therefore “of course” she did not bloom into a resilient person in later life. Cause and effect.

What makes me hopeful in reflecting on resiliency, karma, and these two magnificent women, is that biology and sociology are not luck or destiny.  Each of us is dealt a hand of cards, but we can be skillful later in life as adults as to how we play them.  We know now that neuroplasticity allows us to mold and shape our brains over the course of our lifetime. We know now that we can change our harmful behavior and distorted thought patterns at any time in our lives.  In other words, we can become more resilient people at any stage of the game. Let me hear an “Amen” to that!

So today, tomorrow, and the next day, I will keep leaning in towards Ms. Myers’ list of practices of the highly resilient.  How about you? How do you cultivate resiliency?