Resilience.

Maybe you know it.  Hitting rock bottom.  Having your life crumble and slip away between your fingers.  Losing a piece of your future.  Having a part of you die inside.  For me, it was the stillbirth of my daughter.  I was thrown off a cliff, my fingers slipping down and further down as they tried to hold on.  I could have let go.  It would have been so easy to just let go and plummet into a dark crater where I could feed and fuel my depression and hurt.  But, for some reason my fingers held on and eventually began to lift me up a little higher and higher until I finally reached lightness. 

This is resilience.  A word that too many people intimately know – cancer patients, abuse victims, people who have experienced tragedy or near death experiences.  To be given life’s biggest blow and to be smashed, stomped on and run over again and again, and then to pick your broken self up and by some miracle of strength, GO ON.  To put one foot in front of the other.  To run.  To challenge yourself physically and fight for life when it would be so easy not to. 

I am honored to be included in Lexi Behrndt’s project called On Coming Alive and to have my story alongside so many people that I received so much courage, strength, and hope from. 

These are the faces of resiliency. 

Read it here: http://oncomingalive.com/posts/running-to-heal/.