Adversity & Resilience Archives - Page 4 of 5

Real Estate, Music & Top Ramen. My Path of Perseverance.

It was the summer of 2008, also known as The Beginning of the End. I was thirty years old, married and living in Spokane, Washington. My twenties had been spent enjoying a great economy and a booming real estate market. I had been developing real estate and enjoying some substantial success. However, it became very apparent that my business endeavors were in serious trouble. Mistakes were made, projects were stalling and the market was sliding toward the cliff. The unavoidable path that suddenly lay before me left me speechless. I spent months trying everything I could to avoid the inevitable. It was late August when I realized, we were finished.

Running out of money, I had to tell each of my business partners I would not survive the next few months. Everything was about to burn right in front of me. I would have to file for bankruptcy and it was going to hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before. This would take years to recover from.

What would I do? Where would we go?

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Becoming What I Might Have Been

By Linda Lochridge Hoenigsberg / 104 Comments

As I passed my 50th birthday, I wondered if I would ever be able to complete some of the dreams I had carried with me for decades. So many things had happened to me. I had been sent to juvenile hall at fourteen, got myself kicked out of school by fifteen, and married by sixteen. We had our firstborn son when I was seventeen, and my husband abandoned my son and me by my eighteenth birthday. Thing went downhill from there. I experienced abuse and trauma. After a gang-rape by six young men I turned to drugs to try to cope with the emotional pain.

By the time I hit my twenties, I was seriously mentally ill. Soon I would lose a brother and three years later, a father, to suicide. I went through another abusive marriage and divorce.

But I worked very hard to recover. These events changed me, but I grew as a person and changed my life. I eventually married a wonderful man. My children grew and became husbands and wives, with families of their own. I had the joy of a house full of grandchildren. My Christmases were no longer the nightmares of drunkenness of my childhood, but instead full of light and peace and the sweet laughter of children.

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Are You Stronger Than Your Past? A Lesson From a Holocaust Survivor

By Margareta Ackerman / 20 Comments

His troubles began with the death of his identical twin brother when he was seven years old. By the age of ten, he had already lost his entire family. Utterly alone, with no food or shelter, he was left to wander the forests, only to be imprisoned in a sealed ghetto and forced to live under the constant threat of death.

Does this sound like the childhood of a happy person?

We are taught that a difficult childhood inevitably leads to problems later in life. Depression in our forties is traced down to how our parents treated us before we were being potty trained. Anxiety all the way in our fifties is attributed to feelings of neglect before we even reached puberty.

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What Life Will You Choose For Yourself?

By Tess Smith / 30 Comments

In 2012 I had the worst year of my life.

I worked in a finance job that I hated and I lived in a concrete jungle city with little greenery. I occupied my time with meaningless relationships and spent copious quantities of money on superficialities. I was searching for happiness and had no idea where to find it.

Then I fell ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and became virtually bed bound. I had to quit my job and subsequently was left with no income. I lived with my boyfriend of then only 3 months who financially supported me and our relationship was put under great pressure. I eventually regained my physical health, but not long after that I got a call from my family at home to say that my father’s cancer had fiercely progressed and that he had been admitted to a hospice.

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8 Steps to Dealing With the Difficulties of Life

By Kurt Swann / 19 Comments

Last March I had a skydiving accident. My parachute opened without a problem and I was coming in to make a normal landing. The winds were a little unusual and I let myself get distracted by other skydivers who had landed nearby. I ended up flying the canopy too fast and landed harder than I wanted. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t put weight on my foot. A friend had to help me off the landing area.

After some x-rays at the emergency room, it turned out to be more than a sprain. It was actually a fracture of the calcaneus. Which in normal English means I broke my heel. Ouch.

What do you do when life taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey! Guess what? You need to make new plans.” A relationship ends, job loss, car accident, natural disaster. War, famine, pestilence. Okay, maybe not pestilence but you could get stuck in traffic and miss your flight. How do you deal with all that life sends your way?

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How to Deal With Difficult Transitions

By Anne - Sophie Reinhardt / 32 Comments

Transitions: we all face them. Bigger ones and smaller ones, they’re always there. Whether it’s the end of your time in kindergarten, starting a new job, going away to college or simply realizing that your favorite brand of chocolate is not available anymore, life never stands still.

Divorce has been my latest mountain to conquer and it’s been by far the most difficult one to date. Nothing, not even a 14-year long battle with anorexia, can prepare you for the shock and the pain of admitting that your marriage is dead.

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Putting Cancer on the Back Burner

By Jordan Guernsey / 12 Comments

I remember being told about my biopsy. My doctor sat down and said, “I’m sorry; it’s melanoma.” I told him he didn’t need to apologize, and thanked him for his work. The news took a while to set in.

Truthfully, it was a chance to learn and grow. My pre-cancer schedule focused on work and building my wealth. My post-diagnosis schedule involved much more quality time with my amazing wife and daughter.

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On Getting Cut from the Team

By Kristina Ross / 11 Comments

I’m 29 – that means I’m an adult, I’m pretty sure. I have adult things to worry about. Children, husband, bills, job – those sorts of things. So why is it that once in a while I find my thoughts contorting themselves around an isolated event from the 10th grade?

It’s easy for me to rehash: the plain, manila sheet getting posted up on the outside of the girls’ locker room. The plain, manila sheet with thirty or so names – none of which were mine.

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7 Life Lessons I Learned From Going Through a Tough Divorce

By Nicole Witt / 17 Comments

We all know the saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Usually it is said to us by a well meaning friend when we are at the end our rope and it is supposed to make us feel better.

Sometimes maybe it works and sometimes we may just want to roll our eyes and pull the covers back over our heads. Well, I can tell you that one of the most trying times of my life was going through my divorce about eight years ago. There were tears, threats, the silent treatment, and a huge amount of stress and anxiety.

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How to Maintain Composure in the Face of Adversity

By Srinivas Rao / 16 Comments

The other morning I hit a major setback on something big that I’ve been working on. When I learned about it my immediate impulse was to panic. That was followed by anxiety, and it wasn’t long before I found myself in somewhat of a frenzy.

Fortunately the day ended and eventually I fell asleep. When I woke up the next day I realized just how useless all of that had been. I knew that in order to pick myself up and move forward I had to maintain my composure in the face of adversity.

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Nothing is Wrong! You’re Just Growing. Or How to Live Life like a Big Wave Surfer

By Syndee Stein / 34 Comments

Have you ever noticed how your whole life expands whenever you grow and change in any one area of your life?

I do. It’s like I’m different. I act different, I think different, I respond differently, and things that didn’t used to work start working. I get functional. I get fluid. I get solid. Things I’ve been looking for can find me. Opportunities show up. Doors open. Everything clicks. Life feels easy.

It’s like catching a big wave and riding it all the way in to shore.

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