Could you tell me a time you felt resilient?

As I reflect on my life to date - my childhood, adolescence, my education, family ordeals, relationships and the longed for profession I find myself in, it has become increasingly apparent that only through episodes of raw emotion have I become resilient and grounded in the face of adversity.

With, often, little say in the cards we are dealt with in life, we can find ourselves presented with very few options. These options, though simple on the surface, prove to be incredibly complex in moments of despair, particularly when you are yet to navigate life and encounter the peaks and troths it inevitably has in store for you.

Adversity can mean lots of different things, to lots of different people; over the years I have come to recognise that one person’s pain is not always another person’s privilege. I (would) frequently find myself diminishing my grief on the basis that ‘somebody else has it worse’ or ‘it’s not as bad as...[insert person or event]’. Of course it’s not always ‘as bad’. I am not ignorant nor naive enough to think my suffering is at the peak of human hardship - I do not live in a society where: children are pushed to the brink of starvation; political indoctrination costs innocent lives; people are desperately attempting to flee their country in fear of prosecution or war.

Recognising the lived and unfathomable realties of others is imperative; having an awareness of these ensures we remain empathetic and grateful. However, when we compare our own experiences to the conditions in which we are not products off, we delay and neglect our emotions, often parking them up and never driving them away.

I tended to fear that by feeling upset or ‘sorry for myself’ this correlated to being selfish and self-indulgent, narrow-minded or misanthropic. How could I be upset with my Mum’s diagnosis? Her life had just been saved...How could I be saddened by my parents divorce? People dream of having two Christmas days...Though the latter may be true for both, does this reduce the pain of an absent mother when transitioning into womanhood? Does it remove the vivid image of your parent being wired up to countless machines in HDU? Is the nomadic natured lifestyle, endured from 4 years old, eradicated? Recognising others’ suffering should not come at the cost of invalidating your own.

If I could give my younger self any advice, what would it be? Quite simply, this: Feel deeply and suffer loudly. “We live the rest of our lives in our own heads - make sure they are nice places to be. “