My adventures have definitely encouraged and enabled me to adapt and evolve and all that has come about because they have developed my ability to reflect. I am not the same person I was 11 years ago. I have learned so much about myself and other people. This has often resulted in me stepping away. With no ill will, or malice. In fact only four seats on my mini bus of life are occupied at this moment in time. And I am at peace with that.

Over the year meeting new people, observing the way they have, or have not, welcomed me has enabled me to see so much. Here is one of the times this happened.

Last year ‘Life’ sent me to work with social workers, some of them were really lovely. One particular lady would often chat to me, and as I talked about my experiences in life in a ‘matter of fact way’ she would just look at me and say ‘Oh Moira, that’s awful.’ I was taken aback at first, that someone could see just how awful some things had been, because I had just absorbed them and carried on.

It got me thinking. I just never see myself as a victim. Personally, for me, as soon as you believe you’re a victim, feel hard done by, even if you have been, then you become a victim of so much more.

After these conversations I realised that you could say I had been a victim of emotional abuse, often. But I also realised that I had just got up and got on with it. It had taken me a long time, in some cases, to realise what had happened, but once I realised I acknowledged it, made some mental notes for learning , and got on with it. What else can you do?

To dwell on things has never been productive for me.

I have written in my other blog ‘Making This Better’, of how I would ask myself the question ‘What is this going to achieve?’ The answer was always ‘just more pain.’ Why do that? I don’t dwell, but by God I learn. Even more so as I have got older.

The lady that I would chat too would then say to me ‘you are so resilient, and I realised I was, and aren’t I lucky that I am?

According to Merriam- Webster dictionary resilience is defined as ‘ an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change’.

I am not sure if easily should sit in that definition. From my experience my resilience grew from a number of awful things happening to me, but I continued. I realised, very early in life, that you have to keep going, and then I realised the next time something awful happened that I had survived the first time, I could do it again.

I do have a strong personality, and, as is often the case, when I was younger I was much maligned for it. My mum’s narcissistic siblings felt I was too gobby, too loud. One uncle blamed me for everything, one day without looking up, he shouted my name when a glass was broken, only to find I was actually sitting down, colouring in. (Yes, I was a child at that time.) He looked foolish, but his lack of emotional intelligence, and his arrogance, never stopped him doing it. Until I got older, and I stooped him. That man was a fool.

His wife told me I would be nothing, and be pregnant before I was 16. She was so convinced she bet me five pound, which was a lot of money in the seventies. She never did pay me that fiver, and when challenged years later denied ever saying it.

My other aunts would make my mum cry about me. Saying how horrible I was, how I would be nothing. They would invite my sister to be bridesmaid at their daughter’s wedding, but exclude me. But I had allies in the family, my auntie Edie and uncle Mac, I can remember auntie Edie fighting like a tiger with them, sticking up for my mum and me. She was the seamstress in the family so when that wedding came about she made the dresses, and used the offcuts to make me an unofficial flower girl outfit. Isn’t it funny how those kind acts enable you?

My mum was the youngest of twelve you see, she would try and fight back, but was more often reduced to tears. My dad was Irish, and I think he was afraid to put his head above the parapet, amongst other things.

But my dad had been denied an education and so he taught me to read, the ultimate gift. In addition he came from an Ireland in the 1930s, where the church was never questioned, and I honestly think that he could not cope with what he saw as wilfulness in me. I would not conform, even then.

Now I dislike religion, the divisivenesses and control it exerts over people. My dad was an intelligent man, but I do think his emotional intelligence was curbed by his religious beliefs.

I have been so fortunate to be born with such a strong personality. When I read ‘The Road Less Travelled’ and M Scott Peck talked about how blessed people are if they have strong personalities, I realised that i was one of those people. I also realised that people put that strength of personality down, because they cannot control that person, and understanding that made me even more determined to never let go of that asset. But I also learned from him that you have to learn to control a strong personality, and that will be an ongoing learning for the rest of my life.

As M Scott Peck says “We cannot be a source of strength unless we nurture our own” .

I know now that it has took me through some of the worst periods in my life: ‘The War’, excluded from family decisions about me, lied to by those I thought were my roots, hostility to the point of hatred by some I have only ever loved, and tried to guide. I have come to learn that it is very true that in life you are on your own. I have also come to understand the Tao’s meaning of labels, and how they come to control you.

Being an empath, I tend to attract narcissists like flies to shit. I did not realise to what extent until this adventure was well and truly under way, and that brings me to this adventure….

When you step outside of your comfort zone, and deal with adversity, which you will inevitably will, you can use that experience by telling yourself ‘I got through that‘, this is what I learned from that, and then when adversity comes a knocking again you know you have the ability to get through it, because you got through it once already. And it didn’t kill you, it hurt you, but it helped you build that armour of resilience.

When you step outside of your of your comfort zone, and away from people, and the story of your life you have always been told by others, when you are resilient enough to be on your own with nobody else, I truly believe that only then will you be able to look back at the painful times, and see them for what they were.

But what I learned from ‘The War’ is that although you understand you are ultimately alone, you can then choose the people you let into your life with no fear. Just like I allowed RD i to my life now with no fear. And in that way the pressure on him is removed.

You can learn from devastating times, grow from them, and become so resilient that you don’t even know you are!

But I do now!

Moisy