Resilience in the Face of Adversity; Navigating Trauma and Tough Times by Care’n Mooney

Resilience is the gift of life.

Our very first trauma is that of becoming an air-breathing, self-reliant, self-sustaining member of the human race.

We experience this through the trauma of birth.

Science now agrees that the very act of being born, forced out of our safe, warm, quiet, and non-glaring environment, where everything was provided for us, constitutes a trauma. Our very breath, food, elimination, comfort, and peaceful existence are literally ripped from us as we are expelled into a loud, bright, and unsafe environment.

This is “Trauma 101”. Welcome to learning resilience, understanding compassion, and developing self-sustainability through the experience of trauma. We also experience pleasure and joy; however, the lessons learned through overcoming trauma seem to impact us in truly life-changing ways.

This adversity helps us become strong, self-reliant, independent, and equipped with problem-solving skills.

We arrived with a plan and needed certain stimuli to trigger our growth, awareness, and resilience, allowing us to overcome challenges that make us stronger.

These experiences provide us with a deeper understanding of how to navigate life and accomplish the plan we decided was ours to fulfill.

Encountering losses, perceived failures, heartbreaks, disappointments, and challenges to overcome are difficult but necessary gifts. Even success can present its own kind of adversity.

With each breath we take, with each step forward, if we overcome, we are building our ability to move through obstacles, surpass them, and grow stronger mentally, physically, spiritually, financially, and emotionally.

These experiences shape responsible individuals who recognize that difficulties can lead to extraordinary opportunities.

Our traumas may leave us battered and bruised, even resentful or hardened, but resilience enables us to overcome these challenges.

Moving through trauma allows us to bring necessary changes to the surface.

Just as heat and pressure form a brilliant diamond ready to shine in the world, trauma can either reveal our flaws, cracks, and weaknesses, or inspire transformation.

Every person is brought into being through trauma and given countless life experiences that help mold them.

We have the choice to use these experiences to become our best selves or let them knock us down and keep us there.

Are we strong enough to examine our shadow world, do the necessary work, and learn to love ourselves?

Each adversity can be a badge of honor, a testament that we took one more step, got up one more time, pushed forward, and ultimately released the trauma to become our best self.

The choice is yours: keep moving toward the authentic person within, waiting to emerge.

The greatest gift we can give ourselves is to resolve life lessons fully and quickly remember them without needing to experience them again.

Learn the meaning swiftly. Be blessed. Then let it go.

Holding onto trauma keeps an infection raging in our soul, leading to the eventual death of our essence.

Physician, heal thyself.

No one has gone through life without their share of struggles. Some learn from trauma, transforming it, while others let it trample them. The choice remains ours.

Every Tuesday evening, I host a heart-centered meditation at my center in Mesa, Arizona, which I call the Open-Heart Meditation. During this session, I guide the group into the depths of our heart’s center, filling it with joy as we allow it to expand and vibrate faster and faster. Through this practice, we embrace our true essence as beings of light.

If you’re in the Phoenix or Mesa area, I warmly invite you to join us. Feel free to reach out and become part of our Open-Heart Meditation community.