The Only Alchemy You Need

 My mom and I have been on a upcycled/recycled jewelry creating kick.  Creating is a joyful act and joy is hard to come by some days.  One of the boxes of "junk jewelry for crafting" we bought on EBAY had a really ugly pair of earrings.  The material (plastic made to look like metal?) was awful but the shape of the dangle wasn't bad.  I decided to wrap them in embroidery floss and voila.  I had an entirely new thing and it was beautiful.  

Isn't this really the only alchemy you need?  The ability to find something redeeming from something wretched?  I'm not talking about being Pollyanna Sunshine and saying things are great when they're not.  Sometimes things just suck, kids.  But can you take your wretched thing and learn something from it?  Can you grow in some way?  Does your wretched thing reveal something to you about yourself?  If we're really willing to look at the wretched thing, perhaps it can move us toward being a slightly better version of ourselves?

The truth is I would still be a writer with a manuscript stuck in a drawer if my daughter hadn't died. I probably never would have had the courage to publish a book. I would not be a yoga teacher if I hadn't suffered five miscarriages.  I would have never become a powerful and effective advocate if I hadn't had a son with autism and a son with seizures and a husband with dementia.  There are times when I complain to God that I would happily trade a little bit of mediocrity for stability but it's not really a legitimate complaint and it's not my call anyway.

You can walk around blaming external circumstances for your unhappiness.  You can blame your boss or your spouse or your in laws but in the end, we are responsible to ourselves for ourselves.  And finding something beautiful in your crisis may require some patience.  In the middle of your wretched thing, whatever that is, it may be tough to see anything beautiful.  You'll slog through or sleepwalk through and all your days will blur together or each day might feel worse than the previous one.  It was years after my daughter died that I published my first book.  Years after my miscarriages before I decided to enroll in yoga teacher training.  

Resilience is knowing on some level, no matter how bad things get, you're going to come out on the other side.  Resilience lets us keep trudging away even when success or resolution or having things get better seems impossible and impossibly far away.  Resilience keeps you hanging in there when it seems like hanging in there is absolutely impossible.  

Mind you, there's a difference between hanging in there and pushing through when you really need to surrender a bit and practice some serious self care.  That's part of resilience too; you've got to be a little bit flexible.  Ask for help when you need it. Take a day off if you can.  Spend an hour playing mindless games on your phone.  Do what you need to do to get through.  Because in the end, the only way out is through.  And if you can get through, you just may experience the alchemy of resilience that lets you turn illness or injury or loss or heartbreak or drama into something that's your own personal gold.