Resilience
3.7.25 | Resilience
Oxford Dictionary defines the word “resilient” to mean “able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.”
It took me years – literal YEARS – of therapy to not wince when someone called me “resilient.” And honestly, anyone who heard my story typically said something like that to me. My therapist and I spent quite a bit of time working to put words to what I was feeling. What it came down to, at least for me, was this:
A firefighter, right? He gets up every morning, puts on all the fancy gear and goes into the fire station knowing…KNOWING that today might be the day that they will end up risking or losing their life to save someone else. They chose this. They are fucking heroes.
Someone with cancer…. didn’t choose to get cancer. Didn’t choose to be in a fight for their life. Didn’t choose to watch their partner, friends and family suffer through the challenges of watching someone they love slowly fade away in the most awful of experiences. They didn’t choose that. But still they fight. THEY are heroes. They are thrown into an awful situation and literally have to fight every single day as their body betrays them.
Me? I’m not a hero. At all. I didn’t choose the abuse. I didn’t choose the trauma. And I didn’t fight. I didn’t even know that I could.
The only choices made in my situation came from my mother and stepfather. My mother chose…. CHOSE to have me. For her own selfish reasons, of course. Then she chose to abuse me. Then to groom me. Then to offer me on a platter to her husband. Then to torture my tiny mind. Then to control me. Then to punish me by abusing my siblings and saying it was my fault.
And who they molded me to be was not…. great. I was someone who was easily controlled, did not possess the ability to stand up for myself and was constantly terrified that I was in the wrong in every single situation. I was insecure, anxiety-ridden and desperate for someone, anyone, to see me. Which made me a perfect target for even more abuses. Because, familiarity, ya know?
So, I guess maybe “survivor.” But not resilient. Not heroic.
I in no way “recovered quickly.” And honestly, I will never fully be recovered. Can I learn to live within those memories? In spite of the abuse? Absolutely. Can I fight to never, ever, be the person that they wanted me to be? Damn straight. Can I build a life that is filled with rest and peace and stillness and joy and love? You bet your sweet butt.
But recover? Not a chance. Because just like grief, healing isn’t linear. And sometimes, it pulls up on you out of nowhere and sucker-punches you right in the kisser. A smell, a song, a photo…. anything can set you up for it.
And I think – and maybe this only works for me – I think that I can (and have very much) build a life that works for me. That allows me to feel the things that I need to. Mourn when I need to. Take up space when I need to. Change and grow and learn and love…. and learn to be loved in return.
Maybe…. maybe that’s what resilience means to me.
“I don’t want to be strong. I don’t want to have to keep saying I survived. I don’t want to be the person who is admired for making it through hellfire, because I don’t want to have to walk through it at all.
I want rest and peace. I want a life I can not one I have to survive.”
-JD Lynn
“The book highlights the struggles Jesse went through throughout life in small towns of North Carolina with an abusive mother, to being kidnapped, to the heartbreaks and the highlights that go along with love and finally the journey it was to become the amazing woman she is to this day.”
— Mackenzie G.
“With vivid landscapes and palpable tension Girl Hidden will have you cheering one minute and in tears of rage the next.”
— Amanda S.
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At the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains sits the small farm towns of Rockwell, Sugar Loaf and Liledoun, North Carolina. A large family struggles to survive the chaotic nature of the family head: their mother, a terrifying blend of rage, disappointment, and religious command. Her husband follows sheepishly behind, a monster of his own kind.
And then there’s young Jesse: unwanted from conception but kept as a pawn for her mother’s bidding. Her life is a tale of growing up with no one to count on but herself.
A story of southern hills, a mother’s neglect, fireflies, kidnapping, birth, death, and the taste of sweet mulberries ripened by the sun. Jesse is a girl, hidden, who becomes a woman, discovered.
