Meet Maz, Resilience Story #5 Healing, Metaphors, Spirituality
She grew up in Iran during the 1980s and experienced the trauma of war in the Middle East.
“I didn’t feel safe,” Maz says when she speaks about the trauma she experienced living through war during childhood and in which she didn’t know when she was living through it.
When she was 10, she and her family immigrated to Canada where she experienced physical abuse from her father and also witnessed this abuse hurled onto her mother from which she says her mother was unable to protect her.
She tried to integrate into society, yet in the Canadian school system, the trauma didn’t end. From within the Canadian community, she felt first-hand what it was like to be at the receiving end of racism by her peers.
“There was a lack of acceptance from my school when I tried to integrate, which I’d later call racism,” she says. “I was bullied heavily, called names like ‘terrorist’. “My name was taken the mickey out of, the colour of my skin, my hair, you know everything...”
Maz went onto change schools many times during her adolescence and each time she switched schools she says how she would later reinvent herself to become a tougher form of herself each time. Each time she reinvented herself she would consume more drugs, alcohol, relationships, smoking - each time.
Some say that she was later ‘acting out’ when she consumed drugs, alcohol. That she was trying to find who she was and claim her territory with every move and ‘rebellious’ act during her adolescence. Others might suggest that the war and trauma she experienced during her younger years, and her experiences later in Canada, changed the way her brain and nervous system were functioning in an attempt to protect her, at all costs. And it could be that through each new reinvention of herself she was expressing the anger and deep hurt she had by making herself appear tough and almost unreachable by others.
Even though we don’t want any teenager to express themselves in these ways, it seems like through these actions Maz was able to reach a resolution that would help her shift her behaviours to something more positive in her 20s, even though her 20s were challenging in different ways too.
“I consumed a lot of alcohol in my 20s. Life was good in my 20s, I was living in England with the love of my life who I’m still married to…”
She was able to shift herself into the light over time, she says, and find ways to shift the anger she experienced into new behaviours that worked for her. She would later shift her attention inwards and embrace the anger, and even find out what this anger, or what she, was trying to say.
This is the essence of resilience said by van Breda (2018). It is: “the multilevel processes that systems engage in to obtain better-than-expected outcomes in the face or wake of adversity” (p. 4). The process of shifting oneself and reaching into the light to find more positive ways to shield oneself from adversity (either during or even after experiencing this), this is resilience.
I was honoured to hear Maz’s story and could visually see the shifts that she had taken when she narrated a piece of her story to me about how she used resilience.
What resilience means to Maz
To Maz, resilience means:
bouncing back and continuing on
striving for a better life
keeping on and continuing despite adverse circumstances
getting the right guidance, and being open to this
knowing that we can’t do it on our own, to begin with, so that we can hope for change
taking it on the chin.
“Every person that we meet will have stories…I can’t imagine that there’s anyone that doesn’t have a story of resilience, and eventually, we shake it off - eventually - because I think that having a grief period for really bad knocks is really valid. I think it’s really valid for us to have time for us to lick our wounds before we get back up and keep going,” she says.
Resilience, she adds, is finally, after we have licked our wounds and dusted ourselves off, knowing that finally, we will keep going.
“Because we don’t really have a choice. It’s either that or death.”
This was something that Maz battled with during her 20s. She contemplated whether or not she would take her own life to end the pain. She truly stared death straight in the face.
Trauma is a gift, she says
“Trauma is gift. I think we don’t see this until we look back later in our lives, and go, “If it wasn’t for that experience. If it wasn’t for those people…””
She says that she wouldn’t have the depth of knowledge that she has now, she wouldn’t have the empathy she has now for people who are suffering if it wasn’t for the experiences she had.
But she wouldn’t have said this except for during the last two years. This is something that she has really come into understanding and knowing.
Her spirituality has supported her in her now seeing trauma as a gift. And it is through her spiritual beliefs that she has discovered this ideology that has supported her with finding a way to resolve her experiences.
In resilience research spirituality and religion have been considered an important way for people to let go of the past and find ways to resolve trauma (van Breda, 2018). However, research makes the application of spirituality and religion sounds so clinical. I believe that Maz outlines how one applies this resilience factor much better through her narrative:
“I believe our souls have a journey on this planet, on this earth. We have a job to do, our purpose. It’s no coincidence that we were born into the life that we were born into…I know that a huge part of my resilience comes from my spirituality which I’ve grown to practice more and more.”
“Having the belief that it was no coincidence being born into Iran amidst war…It was no coincidence that my father was who he was and my mother was who she was. I didn’t see it at the time,” she says.
Through her spiritual beliefs, when Maz looks back at her past, she can see that those traumatic experiences were part of her journey. Interestingly, this is the quintessential definition of what posttraumatic growth is in the living flesh.
Posttraumatic growth is defined as the positive, cognitive growth that people experience as a result of undergoing trauma (Kaye-Tzadok & Davidson-Arad, 2016), or the adaptive cognitive coping responses gained from experiencing trauma (Westphal & Bonanno, 2007). While resilience involves processes that systems engage in to obtain better-than-expected outcomes in the face or wake of adversity (van Breda, 2018), posttraumatic growth involves an experience of transformative improvement to one’s schemas and cognitive functioning in the wake of trauma (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Arguably, resilience and posttraumatic growth may occur concurrently as the “wounded becom[es] the healer” (p. 8), and resilience processes support people to also find meaning along their healing journey after experiencing trauma (Walker-Williams & Fouche, 2018).
For me, it is hugely significant that Maz brings up trauma being a gift, in our interview, and I wonder if through this unfolding of her narrative of resilience if we, as humans, naturally fill the space between the resilience we use to shield the pain, with a tendency towards growth and resolve, by “licking our wounds” as Maz says, or as the “wounded becomes the healer” as Walker-Williams & Fouche (2018) say.
“It’s amazing how much it starts to blossom, once that lotus flower starts to blossom inside you,” Maz says talking about healing, “[it’s amazing] how much it radiates towards the outside world, it’s wonderful…it grows from the mud, doesn’t it?”
Thoughts or beliefs that have helped Maz
The very thing that can be our strength can also be our weakness, which is an irony Maz brings up. The anger that she had, on one hand, was destructive to her, yet it was also something that kept her from being with abusive men. She realised later on in her adulthood that the anger she had were “shackles of victimhood.”
“The very thing that I thought was my strength, was my biggest weakness.”
Once she was able to recognise this, and she was able to gain awareness of anger, she could also realise that anger was fear-based.
The two trees metaphor
Maz believes that within us we have two trees. One is a tree of love, and the other is a tree of fear. The tree of love grows beautiful fruit that we eat from, and give to others. We offer this fruit to others. We eat this fruit ourselves and everyone is really happy eating this fruit.
The other tree is the tree of fear. This tree grows fruit, and although it feeds us too, it’s fruit is rotten and has worms. We can still eat this fruit, but we’ll get sick. We can pass this fruit to others, but they’ll get sick. We don’t get nourished from this tree’s fruit as we do from the tree of love.
“These trees are from the most basic emotions, fear, and love,” Maz says. “It’s our choice which tree we choose to water that day.”
These trees symbolise self-love, self-compassion, self-acceptance, which she says are the most basic actions of how we should look inside ourselves. That’s where we nurture ourselves from and that’s where the fruit grows from. Whatever we do for ourselves each day, and what we do for others, represents which tree we choose to nurture on that day.
It was an honour to speak with Maz today and she brought up so many important points about resilience, healing and posttraumatic growth. Her story was rich with healing and ‘love-fruit’. Her words were like honey to my ears, and I felt energised by listening to her wise words and inspired by the practices she puts into place daily to water her tree of love.
Blessings and love to you, Maz
Chrissy x
Listen to Maz’s full interview on Rss.com
Kaye-Tzadok, A. & Davidson-Arad, B. (2016). Posttraumatic growth among women survivors of childhood sexual abuse: Its relation to cognitive strategies, posttraumatic symptoms, and resilience. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 8(5), 550. Tedeschi, R. G. & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). " Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence". Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. van Breda, A. D. (2018). A critical review of resilience theory and its relevance for social work. Social Work, 54(1), 1–18. Walker-Williams, H. J. & Fouché, A. (2018). Resilience enabling processes and posttraumatic growth outcomes in a group of women survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Health SA Gesondheid, 23, 1–9. Westphal, M. & Bonanno, G. A. (2007). Posttraumatic growth and resilience to trauma: Different sides of the same coin or different coins? Applied Psychology, 56(3), 417–427.