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Tag: resilience

November 21, 2025

the not-so-simple tasks of being alive

life, sometimes, makes like it’s an arcade of carnival challenges, and to make it to the other side is, in fact, something of a triumph we barely take time to note.

we shouldn’t, though, take it for granted. we are mightier than we think. and there will come times when we truly need to believe how mighty we can be. we’re not here on this earth to dawdle around.

as this week draws to a close, i can testify that these things happened: a new used car was found, bought, driven home, and will soon be ferried to another state; a kid wrestled through the decision of which of three job offers he’d choose, and started the one; husband down for the count with a cough that sounds like it’s hollowing his lungs; cavity filled in the way back of my mouth; latest peek at my lungs behind me (now awaiting results, a fraught interval that always leads to some trembles); and the latest round of edits on Book No. 6 at last sent off to editor (i had to wait till her calendar cleared).

not included in the list, but very much there, are the facts that i spent the week dodging the heck out of whatever virus was mucking up the works, for fear my scan or my cavity filling would get bumped; also, never mind the “check tire pressure” light that went on halfway home from the car lot, and the hurdles to get that untangled. in addition, i arose each dawn, never crashed my own car, swam a few miles, cooked a few mediocre dinners and one or two fair ones, and grocery shopped what seems like ninety-five times.

such is the business of living. each week throws at us a spaghetti bowl of hurdles, some humdrum, some of dimension that leads us to gulping.

it’s the quotidian stuff that comprises our day to day. and to make it through and to the other side is a feat that draws on cords and gears we barely acknowledge. to miss the chance to take note, to not ponder just how resilient we are, just how swiftly we can untangle ourselves from houdini’s chains is to short shrift our capacities.

we live our lives amid stories of what seem insurmountable feats: folks rolling into surgeries that untangle their insides, or shave off a lump on their spine; house fires that leave lives in ashes and soggy remains; kids finding out their cancer is double-D badd. (and those are stories plucked only from the last 48 hours, each one devastating and true.)

the news of the bad guys around us might distract and infuriate and leave us in tears. but the hard work of being human is never far from home. it’s the pit in our belly we awake with, and the headache that drums us to sleep. it’s what we might face before breakfast, and what comes with an unsuspecting wallop midway through the day. it comes in the phone call we never expected, and the one that makes us fall to our knees.

i’m not trying out for a part as the voice of doom here. i’m simply saying what we too often forget: no matter the circumstances, nor the twists in the story, we are all made of strong stuff—stronger than we remember to note.

to get to the other side of the traumas and troubles that hurtle our way is worthy of note, if not ovation. it might do us well to take count of the muscle it takes, and the grit, and the intense imagination, to merely get to the other side.

and here we are, on the far side of all those things that a week ago seemed insoluble.

that alone might stand as proof that even the frailest among us are tough as tough can be. and we can take on just about anything. we are breathed into life with every capacity our lives will demand. and we are living proof of how much we can survive.

you needn’t share this with anyone other than yourself, but perhaps you might find strength in looking back across the arc of your life and seeing what a marvel you are, and all the impossible hills you have climbed. what marvels you the most?

as antidote to all that, i bring you a bit of wonder in the form of the latest book that crossed my transom. it’s titled bellyache: poems for sensitive souls (harper one, 2026), and they had me at the subtitle. it’s by brianna pastor, a poet described in her bio as “a queer writer, empath, advocate, and author of the poetry collection good grief.” the book isn’t due out till february, but i got a review copy, and i’ll share a few marvels here. pastor’s poetry is rooted in childhood trauma and what it means to heal, with sensitivity and love as the non-negotiable parts of the deal. she writes, according to the author note, “about the raw, the uncomfortable, the overlooked, and makes clear that at the root of all things, is love.” it’s not every day that you open a book and find yourself in the midst of a poet whose heart feels so immensely attuned to the pain and the preciousness of tender, tender feeling.

here’s one of my favorites….

and here are two others (the spare simplicity is everything in these love-drenched poems):

and this:

Excerpted from pages10-12 Bellyache by Brianna Pastor, reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026.

13 Comments
March 5, 2021

here we are, resilient

when the two feet of snow out my kitchen door melted, these resiliencies awaited. pushed clear through the snow, undaunted.

if you’d sat us all down a year ago, turned allllll the pages of the calendar, past easter, past fourth of july, past thanksgiving, christmas, valentine’s day, and everyone’s birthday; if you’d told us we’d skip our kid’s law school graduation, wouldn’t see where he lived far, far, away, in a city that protests and burns; if you told us that after 26 years of grammy tuesdays, they’d stop on a dime; if you told us one kid would spend a college semester taking in classes from under the quilt of his boyhood; or that the newsroom at the roots of this family would up and get scrubbed; if you told me i’d think twice about going into a grocery store, would hold my breath as long as i could if ever i ran into anyone with a mask slid under their nose or nowhere at all; if you told me i’d have dinner with the same one person every night for 365 dinners (and plenty of lunches, besides), i’d have asked if you were nuts.

and never mind the long months when we lysol-wiped every box of cereal or pasta, every jar of marinara, and carton of milk. and sang the birthday song twice while washing our hands.

that little red-ringed virus has done a number on us, managed to whip us in line (some of us) like nothing ever before.

we’ve made it a year.

we’ve zoomed. we’ve not touched or hugged or kissed. we’ve learned–and mostly forgotten–how long the little rascal of a virus lived on wood, paper, and stainless steel. we’ve parsed the virtues of N95, KN95, and plain old bandana. we’ve canceled plane tickets (or mostly gotten two-year extensions). we’ve learned how long we can drive without pulling over to rest stops. (clear to middle ohio, in the case of my award-winning bladder.)

we made it a year.

on the bright side, we’ve dabbled in sour dough, given names to the blobs bubbling and growing deep in the fridge (and we dumped it ceremoniously and sadly when at last we surrendered in sorry defeat). we’ve taken up star gazing (that lasted not nearly as long as the sour dough). and walking in woods (still ongoing, though the snows are slowing us down). i’ve taken up the book of common prayer, each morning’s quiet beginning. i’ve put down the big book too, searching for something with broader inclusion, something less rote. and i’ve not minded, not one single weekend, not having to worry about too many places to be, and the politics therein.

in a word, it’s gone from surreal at the start, to just plain odd. we’ve recalibrated just about everything.

i can barely stand to imagine how lonely it’s been for everyone who’s bearing this out all alone. i worry to death about kids who don’t know the joy of a play date, let alone running out the door to see who can skip down the sidewalks. or climb trees. or hop on a bike and see where it goes. i worry about kids in high school, and college, stuck in their dorm rooms, wholly unable to romp in the ways we’ve long thought were the essence of going to college.

i worry to death for every small business now shuttered. or shuddering.

i worry to death for the ones who’ve had to get up every single morning, slip on a mask and face the masses: be it ringing up groceries, delivering mail, or answering 9-1-1 calls.

we shouldn’t have to be afraid of standing closer than six feet away from a stranger.

but here we are.

we’ve made it a year.

it’s true, thank God, no bombs were dropping, and boys we love weren’t being shipped overseas, not most of them anyway. it’s hard to imagine how bursting our hearts might be if that was the trial. and at least we can stand under the heavens and breathe. i’ve thought more than maybe ever before about hiroshima, about radioactive fallout, and what it would be like to be unable to go out the door. thank God we can still go outside. thank God it’s the one sure and certain thing we can do, digging in dirt all our own, or stalking the wilds where it’s all common denominator.

it’s hard to make sense of this long last year. but it seems there might be an end off in the distance. i can barely imagine filling my dining room table again. but i think of it often. long for it. want little more than the sound of the doorbell ringing. and voices i love filling the rooms, bouncing off the walls. even doing the stacks of dishes at the end of the night, when the whole night plays over and over in your head, when you laugh out loud all over again, and you’re there at the sink, alone with the suds, and it’s after midnight, but you’re remembering the look on someone’s face, or the line that nearly made you fall from your chair, you were laughing so hard.

it feels like a distant mirage, the dinner table filled with people we love.

but we made it a year.

i keep wondering what parts of all of this we’ll carry forward. will we zoom ever more? will we always remember how blessed it is to run to the store, to hug a friend on the sidewalk, to sit on the seat of a bus or a train?

these are the things i’m thinking about, as this one long year draws to its close….

if you’d told us a year ago, we’d never have signed on the dotted line. turns out, we can do the things we’d never imagine. turns out, we’re resilient after all.

what did you learn this year?

15 Comments
April 6, 2018

once again, resilience

scilla resilient

the Great Book of Creation must understand that i belong in remedial class, the flock for slow learners, the ones who need the lessons over and over (and over) again. all but pounded into our thick Homo sapiens skulls.

take Resilience, the course now being offered in the great outdoors. the course that zips us through the syllabus of rise, bud, pummel, wait to see what happens.

the pressing question, the one the professor whispers in our plugged-up ears: will we surrender hope, throw in the trowel and clomp away, or will we stubbornly, insistently believe that one day the hallelujah will be ours?

let the examination begin:

perhaps your sliver of acreage, like mine, was just beginning to break the thaw. perhaps the itty-bitty wisps of green had risen all around. perhaps their flags of cobalt blue or white or even butter yellow had been hoisted. and then the april rain turned frigid cold, turned to slosh of snow. and the dang beauties, caught in the act, were flash frozen, stopped at half-mast.

and you, zipped inside your fluffy layers, you dashed outside to survey the damage. you stood there, gasping, hands over mouth to stifle cries of pain. anguish of the garden variety. all looked doomed just half a day ago. it looked like spring on ice. as if the waiters dumped the slush buckets on the way to the all-you-can-eat buffet.

but i’m just back in from my morning saunter through the beds, and i am here to tell you that while the little buds are still shivering, all but quaking on their tender stems, they have shaken off the icy bits, raised their heads again, unbent their necks, and — altogether now — they await the rising sun.

while i stand gobsmacked, in awe that they’ve not packed it up and shimmied florida way, i consider the legions of parallels in my own life plot: the heartaches i thought would never end, the friend i thought i’d never hear from again, the days and weeks and months when grief leadened my legs, my gut, my heart.

of all the lessons that unfurl in my earthy plots, the ones of rising up from heartbreak are among the most prolific. to tend a garden, to keep close watch on the rise and fall and rhythms of the earth, is to enter into the frailties and absurdities, the puzzles and conundrums for which there is no rhyme, no reason.

it is to know the sharp pang of brittle brokenness, and to slow-breathe the salve of picking up the pieces, slogging onward. finding holy breath again.

i am among the ones who need all the practice i can get. i need the muscles that a garden grows. and i don’t mean the ones that help me hoist the 20-pound sacks of mushroom compost. i mean the ones that teach me hope. and faith. over and over (and over) again.

and then, sometimes, the hallelujah comes.

i think the reason i settled in these northern parts, not far from the edge of the great lake, might have something to do with the lessons of this particular geography. the ones i clearly need over and over (and over). 

what lessons have you learned from the springtime garden, the one that endures whatever crushing blows the heavens send its way?

11 Comments
January 29, 2008

storm’s comin’

i don’t even need to turn on the news to hear the squawkin’ ’bout the weather. don’t really need to turn to the back page of the newspaper, the one with all the arrows and the polka-dotted map and the adjectives to scare the dickens out of any sorry soul who’s lost her woolen mittens.

all’s i have to do is look to where the sky is turning marbled gray, the color of the pigeons who, right now, are gobbling up all the seed that they can wrestle in their beaks.

or, before the pigeons came, shooshed away the cardinals and the jays and all the sparrows, there was the buzz in the grocery line. you can tell a lot about the day looking at what is rolling down the check-out belt.

today there was not a lot of fuss over, say, artichokes or lamb chops. oh, no, this was a milk-by-the-gallon, and orange-juice-too sort of day.

this is a day to batten down the hatches, simmer soup, crank the oven, stock up on sidewalk salt. you can feel it in the cracklin’ that’s making hairs, and fur, and feathers, too, stand on end. you should see the squirrels vacuum-cleaning crumbs and crusty donut bits, as if there’s no tomorrow.

you see, here where arctic winds hurl their bowling balls of snow and ice down the alley called the great lake of michigan, here before the towers–hancock, sears and all the rest–do their muscled best to block the mighty gusts, we stand ready to shiver and shiver hard, as day turns to dusk turns to stormy whirling night.

worst drop in temps in a quarter century–fiercest, fastest downslide, they are saying–is due to hit any hour now, with winds whipping up to 50 miles an hour (“punishing winds,” my weather page tells me). it’s enough, they warn, to turn rush hour into a hefty bowl of blanc-en-blanc potage.

and i, a girl who loves some drama in my winter doldrums, say bring it on.

there’s nothin’ that gets me stirring quite like the hurl of howling winds. snow pelting on the window panes. the whiff of snow day in the air.

i woulda made one fine pioneer, i tell you. i hunker down, i brace for storm, like i am annie oakley’s long-lost sister.

i caught wind of what was brewing early on today. i made my way straight to the store. stocked up, i did, on milk and popcorn kernels, the two staples of extended hibernation.

before i unzipped my coat, flung my mittens to the pile, i was chopping, sauteing, starting me a toothsome corn-and chicken zoup.

i’ll not let my children starve, not let them shiver either. i’ve got blankets at the ready, and muffins in the oven. oh, lord, this day is a day for making like a mama bear bolting for the cave. we will bathe in what is warm and fortifying. we’ll not let the storm, well, take us by storm.

while stirring onions, beans and broth, i mused a bit about this winter blessing. the forecasting of winds and cold that gives us quite a warning.

what of life, though, i thought, that we don’t know, ever, when a storm is just around our bend.

in plain old life–not the life of weather maps and wind chills–we pick up the phone, and poof, there’s a winter storm on the line. we are driving here or there and, kebang, we just skidded off the road.

life gives no warning, unlike arctic rustlings.

and so, in life, we are left to be always stocked deep down inside with whatever it takes to weather whatever life throws our way. be it a broken neck on growing child. or an email baring threats. one day we think we’re basking in the balm of spring, and, kaboom, the next we are chilled and shaking in our wintry boots.

it is resilience, then, that we must line our inner shelves with. and unswerving faith, stored in gallon jugs, that we need on hand to make sure we can ride out any storm.

i’d say we do best with a host of friends, the ones who appear, as if by blessed magic, at our front door, the hospital bedside, or even as they rush our broken, bloodied child to the ambulance.

we need to live, this makes me think, stocked and ready, for what ever roiling winds come our way.

what a blessing, then, that when it’s merely ice and snow, we’ve got all the warning in the world.

oh, there’s the buzzer now. my muffins–chock full of apples and cranberry and a good dose of mother love–are golden brown, and ready to emerge, just before the winter storm starts swirling out the window.

do you like winter storms, or any brewing, bubbling weather as much as i do? and what would you say is essential to keep in the larder of your life, so you can weather winds that blow far harder, far more fiercely sometimes than any arctic puffer?

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