Are We All Resilient?  ... Hell, YES!

re·sil·ience
/rəˈzilyəns/
noun

We are usually stronger than we give ourselves credit for…  right?  We often don’t know it until we meet an unexpected life challenge, like the loss of a loved one close to us.  

I’ve lost several loved ones in my life, and when I hit bottom, it  was also my turning point.  It made me realize that I had to take a different approach… to find a way to climb out… and see how strong I really was.  That was a gift to me, which I didn’t recognize at the time. I am now one strong lady!  In my work helping support people after loss — I meet amazing resilient people all the time!  

I founded and run a monthly group supporting family after a child dies, The Compassionate Friends of Greater Newburyport, MA.  I meet incredible people there.  I also founded a nonprofit, A Butterfly’s Journey, where I meet people in depth through teaching Grief Recovery Method classes.  However, the way I meet the most resilient people all over the country (and hopefully soon all over the world) is from the photo shoots we do, called Faces of Resilience (TM).  

I saw this concept in another context and knew I had to bring the ability to encourage open expression of grief, loss and love to grieving people everywhere!  Our culture doesn’t talk about our grief.  Friends and family often avoid us after a traumatic loss, such as the loss of a child or partner.  Maybe that is because they don’t know what to say, or maybe it is because they can’t think about it in the context of their own lives.  But talking about our loss is healing… and those of us who have lost close loved ones need to talk about it to heal.  We need to express ourselves.  We need the world to know somehow.  

At a Faces of Resilience photo shoot, we encourage people to write on their skin with washable markers and pose alone, in couples or groups… sometimes with pets. They express their feelings in English or their cultural language.  It is guttural, emotion-evoking and cathartic.  We take professional photos, edit them and send the subjects their digital images… which become a catalyst for conversation with others about their grief and feelings.  It is also a memorial to their loved ones.  They cherish the photos.  

ABJ recently changed the name of the photos from Portraits of Loss to Faces of Resilience for a more positive connotation  and to show how resilient these folks are.  I put together a sample collage from each photo shoot we’ve done since 2015.   Mitch Carmody of Heartlight Studios, a friend and grief expert, took them and made this incredible video to surprise me.  I’m so grateful!  Thank you!  

ENJOY watching this & remembering how resilient you really are!

Faces of Resilience video by Mitch Carmody:
(for ABJ, in memory of Jim Hopkinson)