At least once in your life you may experience a bad break or a traumatic experience. It could be a cancer diagnosis, the death of a loved one, a marriage gone sour, or loss of a job or business. Setbacks and stumbling blocks are facts of life.
"Survivorship" has many faces and paths. But they all have one destination: healing and recovery. A cancer survivor faces the reality that mortality is a finite period of time which you need to cherish. An individual laid off from years working at a company realizes that "business is business" and even valued employees can be expendable. A soldier coming back from the front lines of war and has to transition back to life back home. A woman who has been abused or raped must process what happened and regain her emotional strength.
There was a point in my life where I faced a few forks in the road after a series of setbacks that felt like knives in my back. They could have stopped me in my tracks. Over time I learned to re-frame my outlook to move forward. If I had not done this, I would not be writing this post today, or hosting my radio shows, or have written two books.
I don't believe bad breaks should put the brakes on your moving forward. Here are some tips to heal and re-frame:
- You can choose to let the situation pull your spirit down or lift you up to become stronger.
Let me share this thought: Even though she felt like she'd been mowed down by a truck, she got up, wiped away the debris and tears, put one foot in front of the other and refused to let anyone trample her spirit.