Sukkot's Lessons of Vulnerability, Resiliency and Joy

These are my go-to strategies that I relied upon and saved me in my darkest days. They're three strategies that underpin all of my work, and they're pretty readily available to us all, anyone can learn them, you can learn them right here today.

So number one, resilient people get that shit happens. They know that suffering is part of life. This doesn't mean they actually welcome it in, they're not actually delusional. Just that when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. And knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when the tough times come. Never once did I find myself thinking, "Why me?" In fact, I remember thinking, "Why not me? Terrible things happen to you, just like they do everybody else. That's your life now, time to sink or swim." The real tragedy is that not enough of us seem to know this any longer. We seem to live in an age where we're entitled to a perfect life, where shiny, happy photos on Instagram are the norm, when actually, as you all demonstrated at the start of my talk, the very opposite is true.

Number two, resilient people are really good at choosing carefully where they select their attention. They have a habit of realistically appraising situations, and typically, managing to focus on the things that they can change, and somehow accept the things that they can't. This is a vital, learnable skill for resilience. As humans, we are really good at noticing threats and weaknesses. We are hardwired for that negative. We're really, really good at noticing them. Negative emotions stick to us like Velcro, whereas positive emotions and experiences seems to bounce off like Teflon.

Being wired in this way is actually really good for us, and served us well from an evolutionary perspective. So imagine for a moment I'm a cavewoman, and I'm coming out of my cave in the morning, and there's a saber-toothed tiger on one side and a beautiful rainbow on the other. It kind of pays for my survival for me to notice this tiger. The problem is, we now live in an era where we are constantly bombarded by threats all day long, and our poor brains treat every single one of those threats as though they were a tiger. Our threat focus, our stress response, is permanently dialed up. Resilient people don't diminish the negative, but they also have worked out a way of tuning into the good.

One day, when doubts were threatening to overwhelm me, I distinctly remember thinking, "No, you do not get to get swallowed up by this. You have to survive. You've got so much to live for. Choose life, not death. Don't lose what you have to what you have lost." In psychology, we call this benefit finding. In my brave new world, it involved trying to find things to be grateful for. At least our wee girl hadn't died of some terrible, long, drawn-out illness. She died suddenly, instantly, sparing us and her that pain. We had a huge amount of social support from family and friends to help us through. And most of all, we still had two beautiful boys to live for, who needed us now, and deserved to have as normal a life as we could possibly give them. Being able to switch the focus of your attention to also include the good has been shown by science to be a really powerful strategy.

So in 2005, Martin Seligman and colleagues conducted an experiment. And they asked people, all they asked people to do, was think of three good things that had happened to them each day. What they found, over the six months course of this study, was that those people showed higher levels of gratitude, higher levels of happiness and less depression over the course of the six-month study. When you're going through grief, you might need a reminder, or you might need permission to feel grateful. In our kitchen, we've got a bright pink neon poster that reminds us to "accept" the good. In the American army, they framed it a little bit differently. They talked to the army about hunting the good stuff. Find the language that works for you, but whatever you do, make an intentional, deliberate, ongoing effort to tune into what's good in your world.

Number three, resilient people ask themselves, "Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?" This is a question that's used a lot in good therapy. And boy, is it powerful. This was my go-to question in the days after the girls died. I would ask it again and again. "Should I go to the trial and see the driver? Would that help me or would it harm me?" Well, that was a no-brainer for me, I chose to stay away. But Trevor, my husband, decided to meet with the driver at a later time. Late at night, I'd find myself sometimes poring over old photos of Abi, getting more and more upset. I'd ask myself, "Really? Is this helping you or is it harming you? Put away the photos, go to bed for the night, be kind to yourself."

This question can be applied to so many different contexts. Is the way I'm thinking and acting helping or harming you, in your bid to get that promotion, to pass that exam, to recover from a heart attack? So many different ways. I write a lot about resilience, and over the years, this one strategy has prompted more positive feedback than any other. I get scores of letters and emails and things from all over the place of people saying what a huge impact it's had on their lives. Whether it is forgiving family ancient transgressions, arguments from Christmases past, or whether it is just trolling through social media, whether it is asking yourself whether you really need that extra glass of wine. Asking yourself whether what you're doing, the way you're thinking, the way you're acting is helping or harming you, puts you back in the driver's seat. It gives you some control over your decision-making.

Three strategies. Pretty simple. They're readily available to us all, anytime, anywhere. They don't require rocket science. Resilience isn't some fixed trait. It's not elusive, that some people have and some people don't. It actually requires very ordinary processes. Just the willingness to give them a go.

I think we all have moments in life where our life path splits and the journey we thought we were going down veers off to some terrible direction that we never anticipated, and we certainly didn't want. It happened to me. It was awful beyond imagining. If you ever find yourselves in a situation where you think "There's no way I'm coming back from this," I urge you to lean into these strategies and think again. I won't pretend that thinking this way is easy. And it doesn't remove all the pain. But if I've learned anything over the last five years, it is that thinking this way really does help. More than anything, it has shown me that it is possible to live and grieve at the same time. And for that, I would be always grateful.

There is a Yiddish lullaby that says your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.
I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.
We all have.
And I know that way over there
there’s another woman
who looks just like me
because we are all so very similar
and she has also been crying.
All those tears, a sea of tears
they all taste the same.
Can we take them
gather them up,
remove the salt
and pour them over our desert of despair
and plant one tiny seed.
A seed wrapped in fear,
trauma, pain,
war and hope
and see what grows?
Could it be
that this woman
so very like me
that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years
laughing without teeth
because we have drunk so much sweet tea together
and now we are so very old
and our faces are creased
like worn-out brown paper bags.
And our sons
have their own grandchildren
and our sons have long lives
One of them without an arm
But who needs two arms anyway?
Is it all a dream?
A fantasy?
A prophecy?
One tiny seed.