aging well

"Never, ever, listen to the never-ever doctors," he said. "They don't know they're wrong. People can feel better if they don't give up and if they keep on trying."  

Two years after a traumatic brain injury left him in severe chronic pain, functionally blind, and unable to walk a block without a mobility device, our 12 year old son had already become an expert in all kinds of doctors. And in not giving up, despite the fact that nearly all the neurologists and specialists he saw for his brain injury told him some version of "you'll never, ever" be able to see well again, be an athlete, or live without chronic pain. (Can you imagine telling this to an injured ten year old? I can't. But that's a different story...)  Fortunately, despite them, or in spite of them, he developed an expertise in grit and in perseverance.  

Here's some of the twelve year old wisdom/resilience which enabled him (along with hyperbaric oxygen therapy and functional neurology), to heal completely, recover perfect eyesight, become an athlete again, graduate from high school and college, and become a successful engineer and all-around-great-person.  

Re Thankfulness:  “Before I had my concussion, I didn’t realize what a blessing it was to be able to run and play, to do things with my friends, even to be able to go to school and think well. Now I am really thankful for what I can still do.  I thank God every day for all the blessings I still have.”

Re pain:  "When I have pain, I just try and distract myself.  I think of something else or do something different.“

Re Perseverance: "Some people might not know they have to keep trying to feel better. They might not have a nurse like you for a mom or know they should go to a different doctor if that guy isn’t helping them get better or feel better.”

Re helping others: “Now that I feel better from (my hyperbaric) treatment, I want to help other people feel better too." 

Perspective matters.  Whether you have a traumatic brain injury at an early age or cancer in old age, recovering your own interior strength, or resilience, will help you move forward. Your own formula for getting through tough times may be the same as our sons': thankfulness, perseverance, grit, and service. Or it may be different.  Either way, it's important to uncover what helped you navigate past difficulties, because, more than likely,  that's what will help you now and in the future.  

In psychotherapy, resilience is recognized as a vital component for helping a person endure and cope with ageing, sorrow, loss, and grief. Each one of us, it turns out, has a particular 'home-made' brand of resilience, woven from the strands of our total life experiences thus far, including the life lessons we've learned from heroes and friends, mothers and mentors.

To be resilient is, quite literally, to be flexible, to be buoyant, to float more easily. To be resilient in time of personal difficulty is to be less likely to be pulled under by waves of discouragement or stuck in undercurrents of melancholy. Resilience does not buffet us from life's waves and undercurrents: that would be impossible. Waves of discouragement and undercurrents of sorrow are a characteristic of life and loss, an unavoidable part of living. They are natural, or at least, expected.

Grit and determination can help us discern our personal anchors, become more buoyant through life's challenges, live the four letter H word every day, and, with help, learn to forgive.  

Remember Anchors

The purpose of buoyancy and resilience is to endure the inevitable waves and undercurrents of life and to move through them, buoyed by strengths gathered and honed through previous life-storms, anchored by what's important to you. Within each of us are strengths forgotten, virtues untended, and anchors unremembered. 

It makes sense: Remembering how we weathered past challenges can reconnect us with the reservoir of strength we need now. Because life's struggles are overwhelming, it's easy to forget how we triumphed over previous hardships. The key to surviving and growing through aging and illness is found in our own past and the pasts of those we honor, in life experiences, spiritual perspective, personal philosophy, and faith traditions. 

Our son was anchored in the love of his family and a determination to get better, have grit, never give up, and always get up.  He'd always been (and still is!) generous of heart.  The injury, and empathy, only increased his kindness.  In the car, on the way to the lacrosse game where he was severely injured, he'd been listing and singing along to the song Ali in the Jungle, by The Hours. 

The lyrics are as follows:  

It's, not, how you start, it's how you finish,
And it's, not, where you're from, it's where you're at

Everybody gets knocked down,
Everybody gets knocked down,
How quick are you gonna' get up?

Like Ali in the jungle,
Like Nelson in jail,
Like Simpson on the mountain,
With odds like that, they were bound to fail

Like Keller in the darkness,
Like Adam's in the dock,
Like Ludwig Van, how I loved that man,
Well the guy went deaf and didn't give a damn, no

No, no, no

It's, not, where you are, It's where you're going,
Where are you going?
And it's, not, about the things you've done, it's what you're doing, now,
What are you doing, now?

Everybody gets knocked down,
Everybody gets knocked down,
How quick are you gonna' get up?
How quick are you gonna' get up, now?

It's the greatest comeback since Lazarus,
It's the greatest comeback...

That song, and it's message, continued to inspire him throughout the long years of his recovery. It inspires him still. But for me, the song hurts, still, even fifteen years later.  To me, the song and the lyrics are so integrally connected to that day and the trauma and horror of his injury, that I can't listen to them without feeling sick to my stomach.  It's that visceral.  

Which goes to show, what works for some of us as an anchor, might not work for others.  Quite the opposite: our anchors are our own, not someone else's.  What makes one of us buoyant and anchors our ship from being wrecked, is unique to each of us. And it's a good thing to discover. 

So, what, and who, are your anchors?  Which virtues and practices prevent you from becoming unmoored? How do you access your own resilience-strength?  What people and places restore you?  

Rediscover Strengths

Think about someone you know or knew well; a mother or father, grandfather or aunt, a person who demonstrates old fashioned virtues to you, in good times and bad. Your grandmother, for instance, might not have stood out in a crowd, but perhaps she, like mine, was patient and kind, generous and faith-filled, spirited and strong.

Our heroes might be grandmothers, mothers, or fathers. Or others whose lives included sorrow, struggle, and worry, but who endured and thrived despite hardships. Mentors are the heroes after whom you've patterned your life, and to whom you will always be grateful. Their love, and the sacrifices they made for you, and for each other, is hard-wired into your soul's DNA, welded to the lived experience of your life.

Perhaps one of your favorite heroes was a sports figure: a great baseball player like Jackie Robinson or Carl Yastrzemski, a person who faced down adversity and succeeded despite, or perhaps because of, the odds against them. Maybe one of the people you honor is a beloved teacher or kindly neighbor. It might even be a patron saint; a friend of God who left you a holy example and words to live by. Maybe Martin Luther King Junior comes to mind, or Rosa Parks.  Perhaps Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Ann Frank inspired you, or Pope John Paul the Second or Mother Teressa of Calcutta?  Could be, all of these people are inspirations to you.

Our son's heroes were my husband and I, his twin, siblings, and the other injured children we met traveling through the country, receiving the treatments which ultimately helped him recover.  His heroes were also the good doctors and providers who cared, healed, and practiced medicine competently, with compassion.  Sitting in waiting room after waiting room, we listened to other kids and other moms and dads, each with a story to tell and a difficult journey being lived. What shone forth in the lives of Gabby and her mom, and David and his, and so many other children with brain injuries and their parents, was the grit and perseverance, strength and lived hope present in each of these journeys and within each of these people.  

Parents who would not give up on their children, who would not accede to the malignant medical messaging of hopelessness and ignorance, who sought and fought and found alternative treatments of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, functional neurology, and a multiplicity of other ways to help their injured kids. Some of these children had severed spinal cords and were wheelchair bound. Others, like our son, had the invisible injuries so common with concussion.  Both were served well by excellent providers and tenaciously loving parents.  

The strength he and I witnessed in those waiting rooms cannot be forgotten.  Ever.  The lessons from so many are imprinted forever within both of us. Whether or not I like the song Ali in the Jungle, the messaging resonates. Never give up; always get up; it's not how you start but how you finish. Everyone does get knocked down. But how quick are we going to get up?    

Is there someone special in your own life, someone whose wise words are recorded in your heart, saved for play-back in time of need?  Write down those words.  Make notes of their example.  What lessons and strengths have you learned from their lives, from the grit and perseverance they evidenced?  What lessons have you learned from your own experience, from the times when you were knocked down but persevered in getting up and moving forward, with courage and tenacity?  What did you do, how did you do it, and who was on your team then, and now?

Renew Hope

Hope might seem impossible, especially when sorrow and stress weigh us down. But hope is mysterious: it has a way of appearing when we least expect it. Hope endures through sorrow and blooms in the desert of our daily lives, even when we don't know it's there. Hope can be many things, not the least of which is the hope that today might be better than yesterday, and tomorrow better, or at least more manageable, than today.

The face of hope is ever-changing, always constant. Hope can be a budding flower in a winter garden or the innocent smile of a child. It can be a friend calling to check in, or the grace of a memory, gently unfolding. It can be autumn leaves blowing, dancing, swirling in the wind. Or popcorn clouds floating, a great blue heron flying, a salmon struggling upstream. Hope is the heart of resilience: it is the golden thread connecting us to living the good beyond ourselves, leading to self-transcendent love.

I had trouble with what I called the four letter H word for a long time.  In the years after our son was injured, I felt I just couldn't hope that this treatment or that one would work. I was so stretched, so exhausted, so overwhelmed, I felt if I hoped and hope failed me, I wouldn't have the reservoir of energy to keep going, keep persisting, and keep trying one thing after another, and never, ever giving up, no matter what.  

So I didn't hope, or so I told myself.  Really, I think I did hope, but couldn't admit it.  And I'm pretty sure I had the wrong definition, anyway. Hope isn't whether x works or y doesn't.  That is so limited. And impoverished. If that's the definition of hope, it's bound to be dashed. Hope, I think, is instead tethered to trust, and in me, to faith.  I could always trust in God and seek anchorage and respite from the storm within abiding, comforting, healing, and consoling Love.  That never changed.  It still hasn't, thankfully. 

Our son never did give up hope.  He maintained it right through severe pain and significant disability, always hoping and trusting he'd recover. I don't think it occurred to him that God and his mom together might not find a way to make him better.  And because of his hope, and his trust, I kept trying. (It turns out, he had enough hope for both of us.)  We were told by numerous medical providers that his hope-filled, optimistic, hard-working, and determined attitude was one of the many reasons he recovered. It's a lot easier to heal when one's heart is all in to hope. 

How do you define hope? Can you think of specific instances in your own life when you have chosen to hope, even when it was hard?  Or when you haven't hoped but would have liked to? Is hope, for you, connected to trust? To faith? To grit? To beauty? To love? How might you implement hope, in concrete and in universal ways, daily?  

Reaffirm Forgiveness

Asking forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, and giving forgiveness, frees us from the dreaded weight of unlove. In life, the lack of love for self or others can snare us in dark undercurrents of hopelessness, trapping us in unforgiveness, preventing resilience, and complicating the rebirth of hope and healing. Whether the person who needs your forgiveness or who you need to forgive is alive or not, speaking the following words can set you free: "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I forgive you." 

Please note: forgiving yourself or someone else for something, does not make what occurred OK.  It simply allows you to make a deliberate decision to give up feelings of resentment and start on a path to your own healing.  Honestly? It's hard to be recover when you're weighted down by unforgiveness.  Forgiveness is a practical decision, more than anything.  And it's not a feeling.  It's a decision.  You don't have to feel anything differently, in truth, you might not. Just plow through with the choice to forgive. 

Forgiveness, too, was a challenge for me in the years after our son's injury. Our son, thankfully, never had any problem with being angry or unforgiving of those who hurt him. It still is a challenge for me sometimes, even now, as I write this. 

I was so angry at his coach for not taking him out of the game after he incurred a massive head blow, for letting him continue to play on an injured brain, so angry at fellow lacrosse parents, who justified that decision, and continued making it for other children, despite state law and rudimentary common sense.  I was furious at my tribe of conventional medical providers, at neurologists and ophthalmologists who evidenced narrow-mindedness and arrogance, furious at his teachers and the parents of his friends, who wondered "if he was really injured" because he didn't "look" injured, and furious at our local Children's Hospital, who had a worthless concussion clinic run by an ignorant orthopedist, who even told me he was in it for the money, rather than the kids.

Honestly, I thought for awhile that maybe I could forgive them all, if only they would apologize. Profusely, preferably often.  But aside from the lacrosse coach, who had real remorse, not a one said they were sorry.  Some, it seemed, ignored the wrong.  Others couldn't or wouldn't admit it was one, or that they were responsible. A part of me knew maybe they just couldn't fess up, either from trauma, guilt, or denial. Or, in the case of the "never-ever" doctors who treated an injured child as an interesting clinical object, they just didn't care.

It all made me mad.  And sad.  So, so, sad.  I was a mess.  As with any other grief, I perseverated on "if only's."  If only I hadn't let him play lacrosse: it's such a violent sport, especially for one so young and so light. I should have known. If only, that coach or those parents had done the right thing, right away. If only I'd seen the injury and yanked him out of that game.  If only those parents weren't insensitive and the doctors incompetent.  If only.  

The anger hurt.  Me.  It may have hurt others too: I'm pretty sure it did.  But it was all toxic and heavy, almost impossible to carry and leaching into every other part of my life.  I'd created a neural pathway in my brain which led, like a bad, rutted road, to a place of darkness instead of light. And I kept driving down that road.  No "Dead End" sign could keep me away. The oxygen I needed to breath and move forward was gone from that place.  I felt sick, physically and emotionally.  I kept telling the injury story, again and again. I ended up, every time, feeling shaky and ill. Physiologically, this was probably a cortisol cascade, a biological response to trauma and shame. And, in me, to unforgiveness. It wasn't good.  It never is.

Eventually, I just had to give it up.  I was stuck: I couldn't move forward to help our son get better if I didn't let all that unforgiveness-anger go. I figured it was ok to be angry and just fine to verbally turn over some tables at the local hospital, to speak truth to power, as it were.  I did that well and the clinic eventually transformed into something that really does help kids with concussions.  But I had to admit that anger-focused-on-helping-things-get-better is a lot different, and better, than anger-basted-in-dank-dark-unforgiveness.  

Again, it didn't mean what the coaches, parents, teachers, and doctors did or didn't do was OK.  It wasn't.  But I needed to choose to forgive them.  For me, with a lot of effort, it worked to "let go and let God," to ask for his help in forgiving, since I couldn't do it alone. I really felt it was beyond my power.  

After some time, and a whole lot of prayer, I was able to give up feelings of resentment and proceed on a path to my own healing. I did relapse, still do on occasion. That's pretty normal.  Just because you've decided to forgive does not mean your feelings have received the memo.  That's OK.  Forgiveness is a decision, not a feeling.  It's great if feelings of healing and forgiveness happen. That can to occur, eventually.  But it can take awhile, sometimes a long, long while.  

The first, best thing is to: Let It Go.  

For me, it was helpful to imagine myself in one of my favorite places: on a Washington State ferry.  I would, in my imagination, stand on the top deck of the ferry, outside, at the back, and, looking behind me at the massive wake, and throw the unforgiveness episodes out into the churning waters. One at a time, I'd heave them out and let them go, watching them recede into the distance.  Then, I'd move to the front of the ferry, choosing to look forward into the future, and feeling the strong breath of wind and the fresh salt air on my face.   

Do what works, or what has worked, for you.  Free yourself from the weight of unforgiveness of yourself or others. It's tough to be buoyant and resilient when you're weighted down.  Being anchored is a lot different than being trapped and sinking in a heavy net of unforgiveness. Slice that net and swim free.  Come up for air, and forgive.

Can you remember examples of heroic forgiveness in your own life or in the life of your mentors?  Write them down.  Keep a forgiveness journal.  I recommend keeping up to date on forgiveness in real-time, maybe daily. Unforgiveness can start small, like a little breeze, and end up tsunami-ing through your life, creating wreckage and destruction in it's wake. Every day can bring tiny episodes which scratch our psychic blackboards and lead to growing unforgiveness of self or others.  Let. It. Go. Every day, so it doesn't build up. 

Breath out unforgiveness, one daily occurrence at a time.  Breathe in forgiveness.  And gratitude, which interestingly, is an excellent antidote for unforgiveness.  Thinking about what, and who, I'm grateful for, daily, and focusing on that, helps.  And deciding to choose to wish mercy for those who've harmed me or those I love, helps too. 

We are all broken, after all.  Mercy is a good pre-requisite for forgiveness. Give it a try.  

Recover Resilience

Take time. Take care. Give time. Give care.

Be aware of what (and who) drains your energy. When you feel tapped-out, consider limiting time with people who are net-energy-negative. Increase the time you spend with friends and family who are net-energy positive, those who feed your soul with loving-kindness, who are Velveteen Rabbit Real. In other words, spend your time with people who are unpretentious and genuinely supportive. Allow your "heart-friends" to care for you. And care for them. 

Consider reaching out to a friend or beginning some community service. You might be surprised how giving love improves the capacity for receiving love. And for healing. Think and reflect on your heroes. Hear the wisdom of their words. Live the virtue of their lives. 

And don't forget to laugh: Humor is one of the best, most underrated coping mechanisms of all.  It is at once an anchor and a vessel. Smile. Be silly. Dance to music in your car or in your kitchen.  See the delight of small children in the moment.  Emulate them, when possible. Your load will lighten. 

Consider collecting quotes from people whose lives you admire and re-writing those quotes on notecards or sticky paper.  Re-read and reflect. Re-wire your neuro pathways towards hope and resilience.  Remember the lessons learned once upon a time. Renew those lessons, one day at a time. 

The lessons I learned so many years ago stay with me today.  When I see myself going down the dark, rutted road of unforgiveness, I heed the Dead End sign.  Or at least, I try.  I know that route doesn't lead to the high-way or the free-way, but rather to stress, sorrow, and sickness.  Sometimes it's hard, but now, when I'm bugged by someone, I grit my teeth. Then, I choose mercy and forgiveness.  And if I can't do it alone, I ask for Help.  

Think for a few moments. Write down past and current memories of your loved ones. Visualize those memories before you go to sleep and when you wake.  Rather than focusing on what or who went wrong that day, instead, remember ways to look for and focus on the good in one another. 

Be grateful.  Reflect on what and who you are thankful for. Think about who and what has inspired you. Be specific. Imagine how that inspiration might help you today to be buoyant, to float through life's difficulties, anchored by goodness, kindness, forgiveness, and grace.  Tomorrow you might choose to be an anchor for someone else who is struggling.

What can you glean from the lives of heroes and mentors, to can help you journey through aging, through illness, and on towards death? How can you, like our son, choose to move forward towards healing and recovery, with grit and determination? 

Recall forgotten dreams and unrealized hopes. Begin new hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Forgive readily. Heal regret. Treasure memories. Breathe blessings. Love unabashedly. Live fully. Discover strength. Recover Resilience.