Don't call me Resilient

About a year ago I found myself resenting being called “resilient” and I couldn’t figure out why.

A friend would say something kind to me about being strong, wise, or… cue the thunder clouds - resilient.

I could feel a rage come over me every time,

my heart palpitating — breathing, laboured.

A strong reaction that honestly didn’t match the presenting situations.

So, as I usually do, I decided to look a little deeper.

We so often use words that have long been stored in our vocabulary without knowing the depth of what they even mean. Self-defining the words we choose to articulate our thoughts and feelings; sometimes changing the definitions all together. Every detail of our life informing a limited perception of the world around us — layering what we think a word means onto our usage of it.

This of course, inevitably leads to mis-communications.

For my own emotional and thoughtful articulations, I like to prioritize clarity — and this means understanding what I am actually saying by dissecting the words I am choosing to ensure my phrasing is as accurate as possible. In short: I want to say what I mean with precision so as to not have as many misunderstandings in my writing and relationships.

My partner jokes that I am a hair-splitter, I think I just really like words.

When it comes to the word “resilient” — I found myself unable to move passed this reflection. I hated it because that’s not what I felt was true, and I still don’t.

So let’s look at it —

The word resilient has its place in the world - with rubber bands and fabric… but not grief, not with child-loss, not with me.

We see the definition of resilient “to bounce back” in language related to birth and women’s bodies all the time - and I would argue that a woman’s body is the farthest thing from resilient. For this word that I have come to reject when applied to me, by it’s very definition, tells a story of something literally returning to the way it was prior to the event implied in said description.

A woman’s body changes - through puberty, through pregnancy, through menopause without ever returning to it’s previous embodiment. A man’s body changes too, though for a woman there are clearly marked physiological seasons etched in her DNA.

In pregnancy, the hormonal landscape fluctuates more in 9 months than it does throughout her entire journey through puberty.

Throughout pregnancy her body stretches, her bones shift - literally. After birth her body produces milk and attempts to relearn the new landscape that has grown and birthed a human. Often times with scars, be they stretch mars, incision sites, or physiological tearing. The cells from the baby she just grew remain in her body, supporting the health of her heart, her immune system, and any future pregnancies.

When you look at the corpse of a woman you can see which one’s are mothers and which ones are not because those who have had babies have been changed bone deep. The formations of the pelvis permanently altered into order to bring forth the being she has just gestated.

Our bodies hold stories and they never go back to the way they were.

The same goes for grief - especially the grief of someone that changes the landscape of your identity. The grief of someone close.

The grief that changes you to your core. The before and after this beloved person died kind of grief.

When you stretch a rubber band - it returns to the shape it once held.

When a mother’s child dies - she does not return to the shape she once was - she becomes someone entirely new. She dies and is born from the ashes.

So no, I’m not resilient.

I’m not strong.

What you see when you look at me or read when you take in my words… it’s none of that.

What you see is a woman who had no other choice but to keep breathing, who didn’t want to keep going but somehow is. What you see is a woman who adapted to her unbearable reality because she had to.

Because the woman she was before didn’t survive, her ego, her psyche couldn’t continue on as it was - so it cracked under pressure, it tore when it stretched - until an entirely new form revealed itself.

From the broken pieces of who she was, she created a mosaic of who she needed to become to navigate the wreckage.

This is what happens when human beings go through horror and see tragedy. The psyche, the ego, and at times even the body - breaks. Sometimes the change is perceivable by the outside, visible scars, an amputated leg, ptsd wrinkles on the face — but other times, and more often, the newly adapted person is only perceptible by those unwilling to look away. The ones who are truly willing to see the depth of what there is to see.

In my life I have been gifted with a few of these people - the ones who sit instead of walking away when their capacity threshold is spilling over.

And holy fuck are those people ever needed.

The one’s who see you for who you are now - willing to get to know the cracked and fragmented version.

Because everything about me has changed - my mind, my body, my heart — all of me.

So when someone describes me as “resilient” - it just feels false to me. Because I know the truth.

I am not resilient — what I am is: adaptable.

The term resilient doesn’t account for the changes that occur in grief - and to a certain degree, anytime this word was used for me, I felt a sense of erasure. Brushing away my son’s memory as a little thing that would be just another page in my book instead of something that burned down the entirely library of my life.

Because when you lose a child, it’s not something you heal from or move passed - that implies the person that experienced it is bigger than the event —

“I healed from this”

Instead of the experience, my son as a whole, being something - someone that rewrote me from start to finish - for healing implies action or control over something else. But losing a child reminds you over and over again that: you don’t have as much control over things as you’d like to believe. Because, believe me, if I had control over outcomes, he would be in my arms right now.

Adaptability acknowledges the bigness of life, extending far beyond an individual - adaptability reminds us of the vastness that is the world surrounding us. We acknowledge that we have been changed by something because of the significance of it - because we had to change.

To be resilient is to return to who I was before, and I just cannot do that. Anyone that has walked through the flames of grief can attest to this.

So I prefer adaptable - because, by definition - that’s exactly what I am.

Loosing my son changed me in every way a person can be changed.

Truthfully, it doesn’t matter what you call me — if you call me anything at all - words are just words at the end of the day - but this is what I describe myself to be, and finding this distinction has felt therapeutic for me in some way - perhaps it does for you too.

And to whoever may be reading this today I bow at your feet, of who you were and who you are.

In reverence (and adaptability),

Emma Cardinal

As always: what I write and what I share are my thoughts, feelings, and musings - not fact. Never are they intended to tell you how you should or should not feel. If what I share resonates and my words have supported you in some way, I am humbled; if they do not resonate with you please let them pass you by.

With love,
EC