The Gift of Resilience: A Parent’s Great Legacy

The holidays are complete for another year, yet I continue to reflect on the gifts received and one of my favorites is one that I have opened daily the last 55+ years. The gift given to me by my Dad has been one of the two best, for I use it personally and professionally every day. From the time I was three or four, my Dad taught me the heroic journey framework of resilience through story-telling.

Children do not learn resilience by osmosis, or having a roof over their head and food on the table. Love alone does not teach resilience. All those things are certainly important, but children can actually be resilient without those things. A child surviving without love, consistency and safety is not necessarily going to be an empowered child – and neither is one who is given everything they request with truckloads of affection on the side. Teaching your child resilience is an additional and conscious process. Role modeling resilience is helpful, but intentionally teaching a child the framework gives them an added aspect of assessing, learning, perceiving, giving hope, changing perception and taking action.

My father began by sharing stories– some fictional, some real, and some embellished – and those stories continue to teach me significant things about life through them. For instance, I was taught how there are times people will experience doubt and confusion or that fear was a normal part of life, particularly when we try something new. He taught the difference between imagined fear and the type of fear that is essential in intuition. As he normalized those emotions through the different stories, he would then teach how to get through those feelings. He gave me many gifts in the framework and how to transform a challenge. As he did mentored, I began to learn the very pattern of challenge…the separation (or the call), the initiation and the return. I learned that life was a transformational journey.

He taught me about the “antagonists” or antagonist energy that threatens to stop, delay or sabotage the journey and that how some antagonists are actually mentors in antagonist persona. He didn’t portray the antagonists as inherently bad or evil for we all end up playing that role sometime whether we intend to or not. If you have ever been the parent of a teenager, you probably relate to being perceived as your teen’s “antagonist” and that teen doesn’t see the mentor persona underneath at those times when you are trying to teach boundaries or allowing them their logical consequences from unwise choices.

By teaching me the heroic journey framework I became an initiate on a journey – not a victim to life. Teaching me the framework did not keep me from experiencing trauma, but it gave me the tools of resilience and the ability to come through trauma and eventually learn positive things from it.

My father also taught me wisdom that comes from the hardest journeys. Dad role modeled how a person could survive and thrive after horrific childhood trauma which also include losing a beloved parent at age nine and live through the Great Depression. He was a positive and wise man who was always teaching inspiring me daily. I was shown about getting through without being jaded by life.

Many decades have passed since his death yet I learn daily from his teachings. I had to use his powerful lessons to get through one of the greatest losses in my life – losing my father who was my very own Obie Wan Kenobi. It was so terribly painful and terrifying, but I had the tools – his legacy – to make it through.

Having never birthed any children in which to pass the torch, I teach my clients – as a psychotherapist & resilience coach the framework and wisdom of the journey. When they come to me in their grief, trauma and loss, I hold the sacred space of that loss and eventually begin to weave in the elements for them to see their own heroic journey…for that is how trauma and loss can eventually be transformed.

Movies and books are the great story tellers now and mentors like Obie Wan Kenobi are not the norm. Children and adults are inundated by heroic framework stories, with no one to connect the dots – “how is that like your life?” We need to return to the great story-tellers who don’t stop at the story, but teach great wisdom with the story being the framework of resilience.

Would you like to join me? Learn how to take the great stories around us and utilizing them to teach how we live our own version of the journey…the mentors, the allies, the antagonists, sometimes the dark night of the soul or belly of the whale moments. All the elements teach us something essential in our journey. Every time we go through a journey consciously, we develop a bit more trust in self and trust in our life journey.

Some initial questions to identify a journey in your life:

• When you think back over your life, identify a time of great personal challenge that no longer holds great emotional intensity.

• When you were in that time of challenge, what was your personal self-talk (i.e. “I can’t do this” or “This isn’t fair” or “This is going to kill me.” Maybe it was something more positive like, “You can do this” or “You will learn from this”)?

• What was the most difficult part of that personal challenge?

• What internal qualities do you possess that helped you to get through that time? Things like beliefs, past experience, character like tenacity…

• What external factors assisted you to get through that time? Maybe people, groups, activities, books, classes, medication and other things helped you through. What are yours?

• What POSITIVE things did you discover about yourself and life in general from coming through that time in your life?

• How has at least one other person been positively impacted because you made it through that time?

• If we could take that scene in your life and plop it into a movie, what would be the soundtrack running in the background? What type of music, specific song or even noise would be playing?

• The Scouts get a badge when they learn a new skill. If you were to design a badge or have an object you could place on a necklace or a keychain that would symbolize the wisdom that came from that time in your life, what would it be?

• As you reflect on the answers to the above questions, what do these answers indicate about your ability to make it through future challenges?

• Is there anything you would wish to do differently?

You have just found some important elements about your own heroic journey….a small gift from my father to you.

2015

Additional resources: The film: Finding Joe Heroic Journey webinars, discuss groups, clinical continuing education seminars and more at www.theheroicjourney.org