This is Cheryl Brewster and she is RESILIENT.
CONTENT WARNING: The I Am Resilient Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this post and on this website will include topics that you may find difficult.
Imagine, a mother’s gut-wrenching fear, as she watches her son’s deep dive into psychosis.
It’s June of 2010, just a few days short of his twentieth birthday. Neither of us are aware, that in my son’s brain, a forest fire is raging, ravaging his neuron pathways. To make matters worse, on admittance to the ER, he experiences an allergic reaction to a sedative he’s been given. This tall, gentle giant of a young man cannot keep his head upright or his mouth closed. His tongue hangs out, drooling, he cannot speak or make eye contact. Every day I come to the hospital hoping he’ll be better, to find him in the same catatonic state. All I feel is sheer terror. A surreal exhaustion invades my body. I’m drowning in a deep, dark sea of perpetual trauma. There is no reprieve. I am consumed by fear for my son.
Fast forward ten years later, and I am in awe of the nuclear power of opposites. I continue my apprenticeship in harnessing its ferocious energy. I have learned not to judge devastation but, instead, to find the hidden miracle within it.
I believe in post-traumatic growth. I believe that learned helplessness can be transformed into learned optimism. I believe that our spirituality is the life-saving force that functions for us when we can’t. Intention, prayer and faith work. Their only requirement is practice. Here’s why:
On the next occasion of admitting my son into the ER, I feel myself falling into the dangerous familiar; that dark pit of dread and despair. With my son in another room and my heart there with him, my phone rings. I pick up the call. It’s only because this particular client, who’s been going through a massive health crisis of her own needs to hear what I’m going to say. This isn’t about faith now; it’s deeper than that. I know that there’s an eternal place of peace inside her, that remains untouched, beneath any disturbance. I can see it for her when she can’t. I walk her through the crisis, helping her choose tools to bring calm and acceptance. I suddenly realize that in this situation with my son, I cannot and must not, negate this same duty for myself.
The mom in me wants to cry and collapse. The coach in me says, “how can you mentor others if you’re not doing this for yourself?” It was in that brilliant flash of insight, that I realize I have the power to hold my fear, and not have it hold me. I have the power to take these polar opposites of gut-wrenching fear on one side, and transcendent peace on the other, and put them together to create choice, empowerment, and imperturbability.
In that moment, I choose to assign a productive purpose to my pain. I choose to use it to help others. On her behalf and my son’s, I make this invincible place inside me, more important than the terror I want to give in to.
Over the next ten years, I get very good at this. I practice, I experiment, I fail, I get back up again. I uncover an addiction to worry that I didn’t even know I had. I learn how to stop condemning it, and start transcending it, by giving it a productive purpose too. The nuclear power of opposites crystallizes in my own life. Beyond duality are oneness, acceptance and a profound peace that can ride any storm. Over time, I begin to see, that my only purpose in life is to live from oneness and love.
Over the next ten years, I learn tools, that practiced over time, replace worry, regret and fear with dignity, elegance and grace. I find that transcending opposites really comes down to consistently applying seven key components: faith, intention, memorization, visualization, mindfulness, community, and contribution.
Faith works: It accesses a grace bigger than any sorrow, loss or grief, and keeps us safe inside ourselves.
Intention works: it shows me what is possible when I decide, and inspires new behaviours.
Memorization works: The Lord’s Prayer or reframes like “everything happens for me, not to me.”
Visualization works: I role-play my higher self, embodying its power right here, right now.
The Mindful Minute works: Purposefully breathing peace, frees me from the “amygdala highjack” of my primal brain.
Community works: “We’re all just walking each other home,” as Ram Dass says, and none of us does this work alone.
Contribution works: I make a difference by sharing what I’ve learned.
I have learned that life takes on a deep joy that even trauma cannot steal. Trauma might dent the joy. It might momentarily stun it, but with years of vigilant practice under my belt, let me assure anyone reading these words, that practiced intention is stronger than devastation. Every single time. It may not always feel like it. It may not always look like it. But when we commit, then providence moves too, birthing dreams and realities beyond anything we could have possibly imagined.
My son’s journey has and continues to be, a demonstration of profound hope, inspiration, and courage. After many years of hard work and the support of caring, dedicated professionals, his diagnosis and mental health journey continue. Yes, there are basic life-skills that he struggles with. Yes, he has monumental mountains still to climb. But this one thing he does, that I am so inspired by: he chooses to remain hopeful, not bitter, kind, not hardened, gentle, and not angry. Yes, he has limitations that are frustrating and painful, but through it all, he has still chosen to be happy.
Through all that I have encountered, I have learned that the most important thing that I can ever do, is to use life’s polar opposites productively. When pain is turned into productive purpose, there’s nothing left to be afraid of. Fear itself, becomes the servant to peace. In the beginning, it’s dirty, messy, gritty, painful and tremendously courageous work. But it’s so worth it. It really is. My son and I are living proof.
I am humbled that I have arrived at a place in my life, where I echo Albert Camus’s declaration that “in the midst of tears I found there was within me an invincible smile, in the midst of chaos I found there was within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that in the midst of winter, there was within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy.”
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???? British Columbia, Canada
