Why I approach this March 2021 with optimism

I was recently afforded an opportunity to speak with journalist Soo Youn with The Washington Post @TheLilly about how the upcoming months could bring about a tsunami of emotions as we collectively grieve and wrestle with losing half a million lives, mass unemployment, systemic racism and children losing opportunities to play and learn from each other. I shared with her my journey with grief and loss and the lessons learned on resiliency, grit and perseverance and what I coach my clients to do in their own lives. We explored whether these terms of resilience, grit and perseverance , are similar, distinctly different or a spectrum of societal gifts that give us the ability to adapt due to intergenerational lessons embedded in our DNA. We laughed about our experiences with African American and Asian mothers, who teach their children early to have grit!

I’ve reflected long and hard over whether resilience and grit can be taught or is it just innate. Can an individual learn to positively cope from intergenerational cues and messaging. Well, March marks a milestone for me, it is the month of my birth, the month I decided to leave relationships that just wasn’t working over ten years ago, only to discover that by letting go of a broken heart, I would meet and marry the love of my life, its also the month I cancelled my 40th B-Day, the month I took on an exciting job, and finally the month where we experienced the greatest pandemic of this generation where our lives shifted and our priorities changed. There is something uniquely different about suffering as a collective, it can bring out the worst and best in US! We’ve seen the countless individuals who showed up for their communities during this Pandemic, providing medical care, giving essential goods and products to the world, volunteering to vaccinate others, educating our youth virtually and in hybrid models, and many other honorable acts. We have seen it in the beautiful display of racial, sexual and gender solidarity by the countless individuals who protested against police brutality and made it known that Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ lives matter, and Women rights matter! As a millennial women who survived countless adverse experiences, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005, losing a parent to Breast Cancer in 2009, and COVID 2020, I wonder what can't be faced as a woman, as a black woman, as a survivor! I Got Grit Chile and so I ask, do you have grit?

My thoughts are my own, my views are my own...

Dr. Kim Gordon @DrKimAnswers.com