Resilience - picking yourself up when life knocks you down

Not every day is easy even when you’re habitually happy. Today did not have a good start. While I was practising being a good alpha bitch and ignoring the dog he proceeded to tear the stuffing out of one of my good cushions. When I saw it I pulled him off the couch onto the floor, screaming ‘I don’t have many nice things and you’re not gonna destroy them’. Then I sat down and burst into tears. Not the procedure recommended by The Dog Listener, although it did have the positive effect of stopping the dog in his tracks.

The truth is some days it all seems too much. While I am truly grateful to my brother for providing a home I can (almost) afford to live in, I miss my lovely house and my sea views. I miss my friends. I’m excited about the possibility of a new career but it’s a huge effort to try and write regularly when I’m often lacking energy for even simple household tasks. And I miss the perks of working – not only the income, but the status, the socialising, the feeling of being a useful member of society.

Which leads me to ask – how do we cope when life knocks us down, whether through illness, bereavement or recession? For myself it’s always been a matter of picking myself up and looking for the next opportunity. In my experience even when all doors seem closed, there will be one that is open. I say to myself ‘phoenix from the ashes’, which reminds me that that’s my nature. No matter how low life has taken me, I’ve always risen again, bigger and better than ever. And I look for role models, in my case people with ME who have developed successful careers as writers. All of this gives me hope, and motivates me to keep trying. I can’t completely stop bad things from happening but I can control how I react to them – to at least some extent – so that’s what I focus on doing.