Resilience has been in the news alot lately. Resilience seems like a nice word, but to me it stands next to resistance. So I guess it depends on how you use the word. How are you resilient? What is it that you resist?
It seems to me that Elizabeth Edwards book "Resilience" is not a good use of the word. What I have gotten from her TV interviews is that she is resilient to hearing the failure of fidelity. Now many of you may say, she is seeing the lack of fidelity, and even feeling the lack of fidelity, but what I am seeing is her lack of Acting like there is fidelity.
Her actions are to try and get Trust back. How do you do that? Are you not trying hard to trust that which can't be trusted? Trying to find certainty in a land of uncertainty? She says that she is a changed woman. And she is, but her actions are not changed. She is still standing by the man she married, not acting like a woman who is now sharing a man. She wants to be his one and only, and he is showing her he loves more than just her.
She is working hard to keep the family together, while he is going out the backdoor to visit another woman. So can she work hard enough? Who is doing the most damage, her or him or both?
It seems to me that both are failing. He failed to uphold his vow of fidelity, and she failed to leave when the vow was broken.
You can stay, but you stay knowing you are now sharing, and for some that is fine. If you share, you no longer are the one and only.
Is she resilient or resisting the sharing? Resilient to keep coming back for Fidelity when it is no longer possible. Can you get back to the start once the backdoor has closed?
What her message seems to be to me, is that you can, with work, overcome the infidelity. You can un-ring the bell and get back to square one. To overlook that part of him. The part that pains you, the part where he looked beyond you and found a place to love. How do you do that? How do you convince yourself and get to a place of fidelity, again?
Resilient and resistant are tough words, for when something happens that you vowed you would not tolerate, you are then asked to walk. Walk in what you know inside is the way that preserves your self- love, self -esteem, self period.
The most damage is done inside if you stay. And what do you really gain? What have you sold yourself for?
It seems to me that she has picked him up and is carrying him, trying to make him into something that he isn't. What a load to carry.
In the Presence Process Book by Michael Brown he says, "If we pick up anyone and carry them, when the moment comes for us to put them down, their feet will land in the exact spot from which we picked them up."
She will carry him, perhaps die while carrying him along, but she can't change what is inside of him. But the carrying of him will change her inside. She will be overburden, stressed and feel love is responsibility, not free.
Love isn't responsibilty! It isn't working hard to make the other person something he isn't. Love of self is wild and free and allows others to do what they do.
Allow them to be themselves, no matter what that appears as. It will also give you freedom. Stay and share or walk away alone. Your love walks with you, always.
