The Resilient Woman: Patricia O’Gorman
“Resilience is about having guts-having courage born of learning from life’s hard lessons and understanding how to take the positive actions using this powerful inner resource. Resilience is all about stepping into our strengths.”
Each chapter explains the types of Resilience that are out there and then there are some deep questionnaires to fill out to help you figure out what type of resilience you demonstrate. I discovered that I have two types of resilience. Balanced Resilience and Stellar Resilience are the two that I demonstrate in my daily life. Stellar Resilience is when a person withstands extraordinary circumstances and survives great challenges. With Balance Resilience the goal is to connect with the self and to be balance in one’s life.
One of the things that I truly valued about O’Gorman’s book is her section on girly thoughts.
Girly thoughts are:
Keeping your focus on things that are ego driven
Looking a certain way
Feeling a certain way
Acting a certain way
Having certain beliefs that keep you at fault and responsible.
Blaming others for problems instead of the true root of the problem
I have had girl thoughts like these in my life time and slowly but surely I have been weeding them out. They are so counterproductive to what I want my life to be.
Having a resilient voice is one of my goals. I have been fighting for my voice since I started truly losing my voice back in 2009 with the Subglottic Stenosis. A resilient voice is about determining what is our truth for what we should do the process of understanding our resilient voice involves our ability to identify these other voices that inhabit our minds more often with conflicting opinions and attitudes and usually they have voices of those who have put you down in the past. For me that would be my birth mom, Rick, Monte, and my nephew and his wife, and my sister.
Reading this book I have done some of the exercises in them and journaled a lot about my resilience. I have a lot of it. But I have also found some amazing people in my life who are just as resilient as I am and who inspire me to move forward instead of backhanding me to stay under the bed and just die.
I love this part of O’Gorman’s book where she offers way to increase one’s self-esteem and the reasons why they increase them.
1) Work- achieving things help makes you feel better. I have found this to be true. I cannot have a job due to my illness, but I am writing my blog, reading and doing book reviews, helping my sister in law with respite care when she needs it. I am also volunteering my managerial skills for Living Ministries. That is my work and it does make me feel a whole lot better about who I am.
2) Exercise: Chemicals (endorphins) from cardio exercise produce a feeling of well-being, as do the meditative aspects of yoga. I miss moving my body. I haven’t been able to do exercise in years due to my subglottic stenosis, but now that I am moving forward and getting ready to start Pulmonary Rehabilitation I will be able to get my endorphins and this will help me a ton.
3) Healthy eating- not food restriction but eating healthy. Meaning eating more vegetables, drinking a ton of water, and not consuming a lot of sugar and high fatty foods. I am always working on this goal. I am not perfect, but I do the best that I am capable of and it is okay with me.
4) Compliments- finding value in other women and in us always boosts ones soul. One thing that I do not like about gender issues is we insult each other and are catty. Look at how we talk about each other and call each other names. It is so wrong, so abusive, and yet we demand men respect us, but we do not respect ourselves or each other. Let’s change that. I have some amazing women in my life and I love them all and I see their value in my life and in the lives they affect.
I found “The Resilient Woman” useful in my life and in helping me dive deeper into my own healing journey, especially with relationship. Relationships are so important and treating each other and ourselves with love and respect can and does affect our physical health. If you want to dive deeper into your own soul this is the book for you to devour and read. I did. Check it out and enjoy it. A lot of it is what I have learned over the course of years, but it was awesome to review it all in one book. Well worth reading again and doing the exercises again.
Please wait...