Finding Ourselves in the Darkness: Re-emergence and Resilience
“For we are the progeny of a very long lineage of great survivors. Ergo, we are great survivors.”
It’s been a tough year. And it’s been a tough descent into winter this year in particular. The calling to go deep was strong.
But, we’re out the other side here in the Northern Hemisphere. The 21st December marked Winter Solstice and, along with the Great Conjunction of planets, the promise of brighter days to come.
Days will be getting longer and, though the warm months are still some time away, we will be finding more light in our worlds.
What did you learn about yourself in your journey into the darkness?
The main theme that keeps coming to me is resilience.
Our time in the cave - almost literally given the various lockdown scenarios we’ve faced this year - has challenged us, shaped us, confronted us with our own shadows, and we’ve had nowhere else to go. There was very little wiggle room, no other way but through it.
It’s been a brutal and harsh winter, metaphorically speaking, for many people for most of the year. Something a colleague spoke about a couple of months ago really stayed with me so I’m going to share it with you here. She said:
“If there’s not a harsh enough winter, cold and frost, the cherries won’t grow.”
Cherry Tree in December by Sam Saunders
Cherry trees need the cold and the frost to produce flowers and fruit come Spring and Summer. I don’t pretend to know the ins and the outs, but I love the metaphor.
As you look back on the past year, can you reflect on how intense the ‘cold’ or ‘frost’ has been for you?
And you’re here.
You’re probably tougher than you think, having found inner resources, strength and sources of support around you. In short, you’re more resilient. Remember that the cherry tree in December conceals extraordinary beauty, life and vitality for the coming season.
Below is a diagram or cycle of resilience in stages, courtesy of Walker (2006) with developments by Napper (2020). It outlines a framework to think about how we develop resilience, and the various stages required to reorient, reorganise and rebuild in the face of ‘disturbance’.
We begin with new information, change, something we have to adapt to. The creation phase may be something we initiate, but most often - and particularly in the case of 2020 - it is something which presents itself externally. A shake up to our frame of reference, our ‘normal’, our predictions and presumptions about the world.
Although it is only through the new that we can grow and develop, change can still be hard. This is the conservation stage, and can be a place people get stuck at, digging into resistance or denial of new information, and holding back the unfolding flow of change.
If we can find the courage within ourselves and the support we need, we can overcome our fears and resistance and make it to the Edge of Chaos. I love this title, it’s simultaneously exciting and scary. Exhilarating and alive.
We sit on the creative edge of chaos. I think some collapse is inevitable: times when we falter, need to drop down to the Earth and gather strength. It’s the getting back up that is essential, somehow finding the strength, drive, curiosity or whatever it is that tilts us forward over that fulcrum and beyond into the realm of change and transformation.
Change is scary - it’s a death of a kind, a giving up of one way of being, one way of knowing or seeing the world. But in surrendering to the larger forces of life, in allowing ourselves to lean into creativity / chaos in motion, we can find a new story for ourselves.
We’ve been pulled through this cycle this year, no doubt. But we can emerge brighter, more resilient. We can dust ourselves off, see the radically different world with all of its challenges and possibilities. We’ve had the blinkers taken off to many hidden truths about ourselves and our society. The universe has given us a spit and polish, so to speak.
What light did you find?
I’ve been listening to the beautiful song Resilient by Rising Appalachia, and I think it really speaks to this time. Finding roots down, down, down deep for resilience…
I’ll leave you with this gorgeous music. Happy holidays folks.
Work with me in 2021 - email bryony@creativesoultherapies.com