What is Resiliency?
Resiliency is a power that gives one the ability to walk through fire and come out alive.
To come alive means allowing the penetration of what is to fully reach and transform you, body and senses. That means intimately knowing every version of yourself and accepting the full sensory and historical awareness of all of you.
The Feminine teaches us to descend into the underworld and to descend into the body; to be completely present with what is in every joy and discomfort, to feel all the feelings and to witness and see all of ourselves and our history in complete acceptance without the need to change it—just accept and be with it in a space of self-compassion. That means being with our feelings of anger and pain, blame, and shame. That means seeing our history and our lineages, as we perceive it and its truth as it is known, and be with it fully, processing it and accepting it in the time that it takes, not forcing it or pushing it to happen sooner. It means transforming the way we relate to it. It means allowing love to penetrate us and reach into the tender places that hurt and ache and shrivel at a touch of love, teaching our bodies how to receive that love through somatic self witnessing and living. Through touch and movement. Through life. Moving through the discomfort and giving ourselves love as we do. This is what teaches resiliency.
Resiliency is also about taking care of yourself deeply, no matter what situation you find yourself in. Resiliency is actually a form of self-care, not suck-it-up mentality. It is witnessing yourself from a space of compassion and tenderness and taking action to support yourself in the moment, so that rather than struggling through a situation and leave yourself vulnerable to trauma, you are nurturing yourself at the deepest of places while you witness yourself there. Indigenous cultures understood this deeply and utilized medicine practices in times of stress to navigate them and become more resilient. Part of that is ceremony, ritual, singing, dancing, chanting, healing therapy, food, connection, and communion.
Resiliency is a quality learned when you understand how to be with yourself through your experiences, learn boundaries, learn self-compassion in somatically witnessing yourself and truth in a space of total holiness and love. And then providing and giving to yourself the wholesome needs and desires you have that deeply nourish you in those moments as a medicine practice. You provide it to yourself by communicating with those around you and asking for it or by giving it to yourself if need be.
I practice seeing myself and my life as precious, sacred, and worthy of love and fulfillment. This is what has helped me cultivate deep inner transformation, vulnerability, and connection and has created fertile ground for me to be my most authentic and sovereign self. It is what has given me the ability to ask for what I need without shame.
Life is a culmination of wonderful and terrifying. It's light and dark. It's joy and sorrow. It's healed and wounded. There are layers of the self unknown to me, still needing acceptance and witnessing, still desiring to be made whole. There are layers of myself known to me that desire to be protected and held with tender loving care. That takes getting completely real with myself, developing depth and grit, deeper listening, seeing, and witnessing, deeper presence. This is what feminine embodiment is all about: Depth, mystery, inner stillness, movement, connection, and responsiveness in surrender to the tumbling waves of life. Allowance and asserting boundaries at the same time. Communicating hurt and asking for what is needed. I give it to myself by deepening my receptivity, from the Universe and my loved ones.
This is a maturity that comes with this deep somatic practice of acceptance and receiving, and it can't be accomplished when we live in fantasy and denial, or when we bypass what is here and escape into perfection, busyness, addiction, or idealism.
Don't be afraid to be here in your body, to allow love to reach you, and to witness all of those tender places. See yourself, let yourself be witnessed, and give yourself the wholesome things that you need.