What do you mean when you ask me how I stay resilient in hard times?
What exactly are you expecting me to say? That I stand up, dust myself off, gather whatever remains of my strength and return stronger than I was before? That I remain persistent, refuse to surrender and somehow find the courage to conquer whatever has come my way?
And how quickly am I expected to do all of this?
Is that what resilience has become? The ability to return to your feet before anybody notices that you were ever on the ground?
I sometimes find the question rather unsettling because it seems to carry an expectation that I must always be recovering, always progressing, always finding a way to come back stronger. As though there is something wrong with taking a moment to understand what has happened to me. As though the only acceptable response to hardship is an immediate demonstration of strength.
But why?
Why am I not given the grace to wander through my own thoughts for a while? Why must I immediately know what comes next? Why can I not sit with what has happened, examine it, understand it and perhaps question some of the things I once believed? Why must my recovery be measured by how quickly I can return to a version of myself that makes everyone else comfortable?
Sometimes I do not need to come back stronger. Sometimes I need to understand what strength means to me now.
I have ideas. I have thoughts. I have talents and ambitions, and I have a particular way of approaching the things I want to accomplish. I know how to work. I know how to be careful with what I do. I know how to ask questions when questions need to be asked, examine what is in front of me, plan properly and work towards a result. I may not always be the loudest person in the room, and I may not always move with the urgency someone else expects, but that does not mean I am standing still.
Not every person who is making progress needs to announce it. Not every person who is building something needs to move at the speed of someone else’s expectations.
I have come to question why we have made urgency such an important measure of progress. Why must everything happen quickly? Why must every setback become an opportunity to demonstrate how quickly we can recover? Why is a thoughtful person sometimes mistaken for someone who lacks ambition?
There is a difference between being unable to move forward and choosing to think carefully before taking the next step.
One can spend months planning something that another person would attempt in a week. One can take a quieter route and still arrive somewhere meaningful. We are all moving through different circumstances, carrying different experiences, navigating different responsibilities and trying to make sense of different things. Yet somehow, we have developed this expectation that everyone should demonstrate progress in the same language.
I do not understand that.
Perhaps resilience is not always about returning to where you were. Perhaps it is about recognising that where you were is no longer somewhere you wish to return to. Perhaps it is about giving yourself permission to reconsider your direction, redesign your plans and become someone who understands their decisions a little better.
And that takes time.
I want to be allowed to think before I act. I want to be allowed to love a little more slowly, to give without abandoning myself, to understand before I make another commitment and to question the things I once accepted without hesitation. I want to have moments where I do not have everything figured out. I want to be able to say that I am still working through something without feeling that I have disappointed the expectations of the world.
Is that too much to ask?
Sometimes, the pressure to become resilient becomes another burden placed on someone who is already carrying enough. You are dealing with what happened, and now you must also demonstrate that you are handling it well. You must be positive, productive, hopeful, determined and ready for the next opportunity. Even your difficult moments are expected to produce something inspirational.
But what if I do not have an inspirational conclusion yet?
What if I am still thinking? What if I am still putting the pieces together? What if I have not yet found the words to explain what happened, let alone the blueprint for what comes next?
Must I be punished for taking the time to understand my own life?
I sometimes wonder whether we are chasing an idea of perfection that does not even exist. We compare ourselves to people whose lives we see through carefully selected moments, and then we question why our own progress does not look the same. We see the finished product without seeing the years of uncertainty, the private disappointments, the mistakes and the things that had to be sacrificed along the way.
And then we return to ourselves with another expectation: be faster, do better, recover sooner.
But I am not interested in building a life simply to satisfy the urgency of someone else’s clock.
I want to build carefully. I want to understand what I am doing and why I am doing it. I want my decisions to have substance, not merely speed. I want to reach a place where I can look back and understand the reasoning behind the steps I took, rather than discover that I spent years moving quickly in a direction I never truly wanted.
And perhaps that is my understanding of resilience now.
It is not always standing up immediately. It is not always returning with a louder voice, a bigger ambition or a more impressive story. Sometimes resilience is the quiet decision to remain committed to your life while giving yourself the time to work out what that life should look like.
It is knowing that you are going somewhere, even when you cannot yet see the destination. It is allowing yourself to rebuild without turning every day into a race. It is understanding that a slower step is still a step, and a thoughtful pause is not necessarily a retreat.
So, when you ask me how I stay resilient in hard times, perhaps I will ask you to reconsider what you mean by resilience.
Do not ask me how quickly I can return. Ask me whether I have understood what I need to leave behind. Do not measure my strength by how loudly I announce my recovery. Look at the care with which I make my next decision. Do not mistake my silence for surrender or my slower pace for a lack of direction.
Give me a little grace.
Let me think. Let me plan. Let me question. Let me rebuild something that makes sense to me.
I will get there.
Not necessarily at the speed you imagined, not necessarily in the way you expected, and certainly not because I have something to prove to everyone watching.
I will get there because I am still willing to work towards something meaningful.
And perhaps the most important part of resilience is understanding that I do not have to destroy myself trying to prove that I can survive everything.
Sometimes, I simply need the grace to become myself again.