Featured Post - Inner Strength: Finding Resilience in Life’s Challenges
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
Inner strength and resilience.
As women, we often underestimate just how much inner strength and resilience we possess.
It often takes some big, unseen or unfathomable situation to occur before we’re forced to draw upon our own reserves of inner strength.
If we’re being honest, inner strength often serves a similar function to a fire blanket or extinguisher – it’s there ‘just in case’; but we hope to God we never have to use it.
Strength can be seen all around us in nature. Perhaps one of the subtlest but most powerful aspects of this can be seen in the branches of trees on a very windy day.
Sometimes, to connect with our true selves, we have to bend and break a little. Strength does not lie completely in our ability to remain unbroken – because breaking is essentially a part of the cycle of life. Inner strength and resilience are necessary components of this cycle. The tree does not put all of its energy into preventing its branches from breaking in high winds; parts will inevitably drop away at some point and will be replaced with new growth.
I have been through many cycles of change in my own life – some stripping away more layers of ‘security’ than others. These may be the most painful and difficult to deal with, but they are also the ones where so many layers were peeled back that the precious core was revealed – even if only partially, even if only for a few moments.
“Thought he lost everything, then he lost a whole lot more” – Trent Reznor
We don’t always have the rulebook. But we always have the inner strength and resilience to guide us. We can’t always take control. But we can keep the faith.
If you feel called to go within, seek your own power and stand in it. This gets easier with practice, and is a valuable gift in the path of self-development.
