The Secret Midnight Resilience Club
Bleary-eyed, I rubbed my face. Was I dreaming? Every hair on my body was standing on edge; I was gripped by terror by an invisible force, lurking beyond my view, out of reach and out of sight. The sound of church bells ringing loudly in my ears was almost deafening. It near drowned out the sounds of cars whizzing by outside my window in the chilly pitch-black night.
Do I dare pinch myself to see if I’m awake or asleep? Do I scream?
I lay frozen as if I had been cemented to my bed, the white cotton sheets sticking to my cold, clammy body. My heart racing, head pounding, every fibre in my body screaming for me to run and hide, yet I lay paralysed, waiting, wondering, watching in the grips of agonising fear.
Many of us who have suffered trauma, an extreme experience or adversity knows what it is like to wake up, half awake, half asleep, wondering — hoping — it has all been a dream. Sometimes with a pounding head, sometimes with ringing ears, a lump in our throat or a racing heart, in hot or cold sweats. Sometimes with the lot.
I had one of those moments last night, that is what my story is about. Of course, nothing was happening to me at the time, but I’ll occasionally still feel the after-shocks and suffering that severe trauma has caused. I am not ashamed and not alone — We are not alone; when we experience this type of thing, it is part of our story.
The question is, what do we make it mean? What do we do about it? How can we use these hardships of our past to create our joy in our future?
Adversity, trauma and life experiences allow us to grow. They allow us to feel more empathy, to learn wisdom and to feel life from different perspectives. They create resilience. Once we develop resilience the first time, it is there for us the second time — it is like a muscle that has to be worked out. We can make it mean that we are resilient; We are unstoppable; We can get through anything.
The next time you wake up in the grips of fear, hot sweats and terror this story will be embedded somewhere in your subconscious mind: That you’re part of a very exclusive club — the Midnight Resilience Club. Through all of these moments and feelings, we are doing our reps and developing our resilience muscle almost effortlessly, in secret, from the comfort of our beds. And once we’ve developed it, it grows every time we face adversity in the future.
