A LOTUS FOR YOU

Rona Brodrick

In its essence, resiliency is the ability to return to ourselves over and over again, especially amid challenges, struggles, and hardships. Resiliency is what enables us to return, reset, and move forward.

Often when we think of resiliency, we think of strength.

And while courage and strength are important, if not vital qualities that we embrace on our life journey, I invite you to consider another aspect of resiliency — the elements of resiliency that require tenderness and empathetic, compassionate care.

When over-emphasized, resiliency can lead to pushing away or burying our struggles.

Yet it is through naming and honoring our challenges and difficulties that we can really embrace our resiliency. It is here that we can water the seeds of loving kindness, non-judgement, and compassion. It is here where we can see that amid tumult or discontent, we are always worthy of love, joy, gentleness, peace, safety, and care.

We can cultivate the tender and gentler aspects of resiliency by knowing when to intentionally create space and time off to care for and nurture ourselves. This nurturing space and time can inform, stimulate and maybe even guide us through our advocacy work which requires resiliency.

By creating space for resiliency with an open awareness we can tune into what we need — what practices, people, and environments are serving us. Through a lens of compassion, kindheartedness, and care, we can learn ways to release any experiences that are not serving us as we navigate our world and our daily lives.

We can encourage, strengthen, and expand our resiliency when we fully engage in the caring for ourselves because resiliency is at the intersection of self-awareness, openness, optimism, self-efficacy, adaptability, and evolution.

— Inspired by and adapted from a meditation on embracing resiliency by Daniel Sannito and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rona Brodrick is the mother of a sexually abused child. When her daughter was in college, she learned that she was a survivor of incest. It was a devastating day to learn that she endured six years of abuse and did so in silence as so many who are abused do.

“It is one of the worst nightmares you can wake up to as a mother and parent. It was equally devastating to learn that it was my father.“ she states.

Rona founded M*OASIS (Mothers* Of Adult Survivors of Incest and Sexual Abuse) a blog for anyone looking to understand how to support a survivor of incest and sexual abuse. “While I am a mom and some of the resources and articles may be skewed toward that perspective, my hope is that M*OASIS will be a resource for friends, partners, siblings or any family member trying to figure out how to support an adult survivor.”

“I am not a therapist, nor do I have any professional training in abuse. I am a mother who wants to share her story with others so we can shed the shame, open the dialogue on this issue, and work toward ending childhood sexual abuse.” You can find Rona at M*OASIS. You can also email Rona at rpbrodrick@mac.com.