You can fall, but you can rise also.
Angelique Kidjo
Yesterday was my birthday. I had planned to write a post today on gratitude because I was grateful for the many gifts of the day. However, before going to bed I was looking for videos on women in the Congo for a future posting when I found a video that I liked so much that I decided to build this post around it. The video is a moving testimony to the power of life to transcend unimaginably difficult circumstances.
This quality is known as resilience: the ability to adapt in the face of adversity. Once I decided to write about resilience, I discovered a blog with a posting on resilience and trauma. Rocky Reichman, who describes himself as a "young entrepreneur, writer, and dancer" who is "passionate about helping people be more resilient," writes that about 85% of all people are resilient "even in the face of trauma and PTSD." Go to his post, Lessons from the Resilience Experts, to find out more about trauma and resilience. His posting gave me a lot to think about. For example, the difference in thinking of oneself as a survivor, rather than a victim, is a huge one and can create one of those paradigm shifts that change lives; it has changed mine.
Which brings me to the Congo. After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, thousands of Hutus, many who are members of the notorious death squads, the Interahamwe, entered the Congo and brutal fighting has been going on ever since. So many women have been raped by soldiers, that the Congo has earned a reputation as the "rape capital of the world." There is no doubt that terrible things are going on in the Congo. However, rather than focusing on the terror, we should also focus on how the women of the Congo are going on with their lives in the shadow of death and rape. Beauty grows in the least likely places and we should celebrate it and support it. The opposite, focusing on the horrors of such situations and viewing the people involved as helpless victims can paralyze us and overwhelm us, making it nearly impossible to hope or to act.
To find out how you can support resilient women who are working to survive the trauma of war, check out the links below:
How have you shown resilience in the face of trauma or other difficulties? I'd love to share your story.
