A Personal Message on Resilience: Facing COVID 19

Adopting an empowering perspective helps you endure. Please accept this article and all my future articles in the spirit they are intended, to help you develop the most empowered approach to life to live your best life. These are unprecedented times that are predicted to get worse. I have a deep belief that what we experience in our lives, belongs to us. That we are, if you will, born for this. “This” meaning whatever we are facing. If we are experiencing anything, it is part of our path and as such, we are uniquely equipped to face it if we travel inward and find our truest, highest selves.

I offer the article below as a teacher of resilience. My own life’s experiences led me to cultivate resilience in my life and become a coach. In a conversation yesterday with my own coach (yes, coaches need to have coaches!) we talked about what people need and I mentioned how much I have been stressing over the right things to say in my article. She encouraged me speak from my own personal experience developing resilience. I preface the article below by sharing here why I do what I do and why I share what I share. Many of you know the story, but in summary, between ages of 35 and 41, I lost my 9 year old son Jack in a car accident, after I nearly lost my sanity and by the time I found my “center”, I lost my job in a reorganization, then 4 months into a new job my little sister Kristen was diagnosed with cancer and our family helped her as best we could through treatment and care for her and her husband and baby son, my nephew, until her eventual passing after 11 months at age 34. By 6 months after Kristen passed, I resigned from my job to spend more time with my surviving son Steven (age 13) and my baby nephew Owen (age 2 at the time), two boys living in two different states. I also spent more time with my brother-in-law who is now a beloved brother, and of course my dear husband Dave too. This all occurred within a 6 year span in my life. A focus on why am I here? in the face of these losses and what am I meant to do? guided my steps thorough uncertainty. It is now 15 years later and I am 51 having spent the last 5 years as a coach and trainer most of my adult life building my resilience.

Last Fall, I added Resilience & Bereavement Coach to my title and offer this coaching as independent sessions offered on a sliding scale, so that no one is turned away on the basis of affordability. In addition, each resilience client is actually paying it forward to the next. If you, or someone you love, desire resilience coaching at this time, please feel free to contact me or share my information. Both Jack and Kristen are my inspiration and spirit behind the work I do, never far from my thoughts and always in my heart.

I hope you are empowered by the article below, “What is Happening? Growth” as well as seeing the clarity in the actions of leaders, the compassion of health care and store employees and the contentment everyone is finding in small pockets of comfort and moment of grace shared by family and friends.

Be well, be safe, be resilient, Kim