Reclaim Your Power

We live connected to our jobs, phones, computers, routines, ideologies, and the important people in our lives. The subject of this blog is what happens when these connections break. How do we land back on our feet again?

I’ve grieved and suffered broken connections through divorce, the death of my parents, and most recently, losing my father-in-law. It’s often said that loss is a part of life, and while that’s true, how we cope with the loss of loved ones or the end of relationships is as varied and unique as the individuals experiencing them.

It depends, you say. Yes, it does, and the maturity and resilience of the humans involved. Our response is, of course, determined by the severity, timing, and circumstances. My father-in-law and his wife prepared us well, so we knew his time left with us would be short. Still, that didn’t prevent the heart-wrenching feeling of loss when this larger-than-life, caring, and creative soul left us.

We are still going through the stages of grief. Right now, I’d say we’re in the depression stage, as it seems to hit us in waves. The stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are common after relationship loss, trauma, or disaster. Our responses to those stages depend on who we are inside, our own perspective, a lingering regret, unresolved emotion, or how our loved one died. Reclaiming power can be slow or not, depending on our resilience, and each person grieves differently in their own time.

Resilience is a fancy word for the process of landing on your feet again or reclaiming your power. Many things test our resilience and ability to adapt. Today, for example, the plan for the week was to write my blog this morning. I love getting up early, making a cup of coffee, and sitting in front of my computer to write. It feels like all’s well in my world. Except this morning, my computer stared back at me with a blank screen. After doing some standard fixes, I called upon my computer-savvy son to work his magic. He, unfortunately, had to go to work and didn’t have time to devote to trouble-shooting.

The blackness that entered my body snuffed out any feelings of contentment. How quickly I became angry. How dare my reliable computer fail me! My daytimer where I’d written, Do Blog, mocked me. Luckily I write my blogs on an app that I have on my phone, so I began my blog on this tiny screen. It’s not as satisfying as my wide screen monitor and I’m slower because I rely on my thumbs to type. It felt like a struggle. I realized I went through all the stages of grief because technical issues interfered with my enjoyment of my routine. The pivot was switching to my phone to write and my ability to resume my work, or resilience, was relatively quick.

This situation was a minor setback, but minor setbacks can trigger strong emotional reactions, similar to those experienced by people facing much larger challenges. I can’t imagine what people are experiencing down south as they try to pivot from thinking they could legally live their lives for years in a new country, and now they’re not. Pulling the rug out from underneath someone’s security and right to peaceful enjoyment of life is an act of barbarism. How are they landing on their feet again? Where do pivoting and resilience stand against blatant wrong doing when one’s life and livelihood is at stake? I can’t imagine, but getting their feet underneath them again would be vital for their survival.

So how does one pivot from a sucker punch to the gut and wrenching unfairness, to reclaim one’s power? In my life, I have faced a couple of extremely challenging situations, one of which was life-threatening, and these experiences have shaped my perspective. I won’t go into details here, but I chronicle this ordeal in my book. The safety of my children and myself was my priority; afterwards, I spent several years allowing myself to grieve. Just surviving caused me to lose a significant amount of weight, yet I persevered and continued working throughout that difficult period. I’d have to say my love for my children sustained and motivated me to do what I had to do to survive. My feet stayed on the ground because the choice in front of me was to move forward step by step or give up. I almost gave up.

On another occasion, I was weeks away from entering the final publishing phase, following two rounds of professional editing. I was told by my beta readers that my book was far from ready. In fact, it triggered a sucker punch to my gut, almost knocking the wind of out me. That initial feeling led to panic, then anger, and finally a dark depression. My stomach area felt frozen inside. After those reactions, I reached out to the people around me for support and they helped get me out of my negative self talk. Thankfully, I didn’t rip up my manuscript and took action to reclaim my personal power using these steps:

1. I researched the specific issues mentioned in the negative feedback.

2. A third party gave me feedback on my manuscript. I also considered shelving my manuscript or taking a professional writing course for a year.

3. I took a break from the publishing process and focussed on my positive desire to write a well-written book.

4. I purchased an app to show me how I could improve my writing.

5. I realized the people giving me negative feedback had some valid points and thanked them for their honest feedback, but suggested they could have delivered it more objectively.

   
   

After that, I was on my way and the situation felt resolved. I didn’t end up taking a writing course, opting to glean valuable insights from this experience. As a result, I’ve become a far better writer. The pivot happened after I went through my emotional reaction and began looking at my options more objectively. Focusing on my goal of becoming an excellent writer made all the difference.

There will always be tough times in our lives. Some will experience times that are so horrific, unfair, beastly, and unthinkable that they cause us to break, and yet some of those people still land on their feet. I landed on my feet because I didn’t ask why this happened to me. Instead, I asked what I could learn, and what wisdom did this experience bring with it.

Whether the process is fast or slow, I reclaimed my power through gathering information, requesting feedback, taking a break, soliciting help, learning, and acknowledging how I’d grown. My power isn’t in the experiences I avoid, nor how I get back to my normal self. I learned my normal self dies with every change. Embracing my new self with the wisdom each experience taught me is where my power lies. Therefore, I can say with conviction that my power did not fade or stop, nor did I need to reclaim it. It kicked in when I needed it. After all, the only constants in life are birth, death, and change, and all three describe experiences that consistently change us. Therein lies the paradox of life for us humans.

... some things stay the same only by changing. One kind of long-lasting material reality exists by virtue of constant turnover in its constituent matter. Here constancy and change are not opposed but inextricably connected.

Graham, Daniel W., "Heraclitus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/heraclitus/>.