Resilience/Persistence - mine and hers

 According to my Oura ring app, "resilience" is "your ability to withstand and recover from physiological stress over time." And according to my app, my resilience is "solid and on the rise."

I thought I knew something about resilience, after nearly 5 years of cancer treatments and cancer-prevention treatments.  A month and a half ago, I went through the latest round of prevention treatment with a salpingo-oophrectomy: I had my ovaries and fallopian tubes removed, forever solidifying my place in a post-menopausal world at the ripe old age of 43. 

At my oncology appointment four months ago, we did blood work to confirm my hormones were still suppressed (recall my breast cancer was heavily estrogen and progesterone driven), and they were not.  This news, despite the monthly Lupron shot I self-administered to suppress my ovaries. So my decision was to switch to a different monthly shot that was a "less desirable" injection, or have my ovaries removed. Doing neither and gambling was not an option for me, so we scheduled it.  Recovery was almost as expected, except that I woke up the next day with Covid.  Seriously, recovering from abdominal surgery and having abdominal stitches with a Covid cough, 10/10 do not recommend.  

I was off work again for a week, not driving for two weeks, and then eased back into life like nothing had happened.  This surgery was almost exactly one year since the DIEP flap surgery, and I was feeling beat up, but so resilient! 

And then my 7 year old showed me so much more about how resilience manifests.

For the last few years, she's been training for competitive gymnastics.  At 6, she was already at the gym 12 hours a week in the summer and 11.5 hours a week during the school year, and then she comes home every single day and practices gymnastics. At one point, though, she was evaluating whether she wanted to continue, because her anxiety over getting skills or routines wrong - or not getting them at all - was weighing so heavily on her. It took one weekend of practicing with her, showing her other girls performing her same routine, for it to click and she continued.  But the nerves over attempting the hardest skills, and the nerves of impending first competition, were so heavy on her that she was having stomach aches every day.  My poor girl's anxiety was physically ailing her.

We started her at play-based therapy.  Having a word for her feeling was so validating to her, but it wasn't quite getting her mentally where she wanted and needed to be for competition.  

And then... Jay was at an engineering conference and networked with someone - a female engineer - who was a former USA sports competitor who also has a sports mentality coaching practice on the side.  

At the time Vivian first met with her mentality coach, she was days away from her first competition in which she was only competing one event because she wasn't mentally ready for the other three. She did well on her vault and - by the grace of God - got a medal, and then she went back to meet with her coach including to talk about the melt down she had that morning because she was so scared of competition.

The work Vivian did with her coach immediately resonated with her, and she showed up to the next practice and just...went for it, all of the skills she had been too scared to try.  She went for it on her back handspring, went for it on her squat on, jump off bars (bars dismount), and went for it on the balance beam dismount. Her coaches immediately noticed that she had a new fire in her.

I was feeling so optimistic for her and her progress.  And then, the head coach called to talk to me about the next competition.  She told me we should consider moving Vivian down to Level 2 (from Level 3) because her coach was afraid she wouldn't qualify for state competition and she would feel sad and left out.  I had an intense 24 hours, talking to every gymnastics parent I could think of, weighing the pros and cons but knowing in my heart that she could compete at Level 3 like she'd been practicing. I even reached out to a stranger in one of my social media groups who had previously shared her gymnastics competition and judging experience.  Through all this, Vivian was steadfast. She wanted to compete Level 3.  I showed her Level 2 routines, I showed her what a first place routine looked like, we talked about being at the top of Level 2 vs in the middle of Level 3, so she could weigh all the options, but she did not budge from her vision.

Finally, I asked her coach what she would say to her own daughter in this situation.  Play down?  She said she would and did tell her daughter that she could compete at the highest level she was capable of, but it was up to her to put in the work and prove herself.  And with that, the decision was made.  Vivian had already committed to proving herself, and demonstrated that she would do the work - and do extra work if needed. 

When I walked into practice next, I saw another coach that had been away for a couple weeks.  She said "Vivian has done a 180! She went from competing one event to competing all four! She wasn't doing these things when I saw her two weeks ago!"

When we got to that next competition, she didn't melt down from nerves.  She quietly drew pictures on the drive to the meet, she had her mental warm-up from her mentality coach, she was a more confident version of herself.  And my girl got out there and QUALIFIED FOR STATE IN HER FIRST MEET COMPETING ALL FOUR EVENTS.

I felt tears the moment I knew she would do it.  She worked SO hard, had a goal, and did not budge from that even when she was challenged on whether she could meet it.  She killed it.  She needed an all around score of 32 to qualify for state, and she needed a 35 total to meet her gym's expectations.  She had more than 35. When she fell off the beam in her handstand, she took a deep breath and heeded her coach's instruction to get back on and do her handstand again, and she did.  She finished the routine while shaking.  She was proud of herself, but used it to drive her next competition.  And at the next competition, she did NOT fall off the beam and did beautifully.

I can't put into words how much she has taught me about resilience.  And, bigger than resilience, PERSISTENCE.  As her mentality coach taught her, persistence means you keep going even when it's hard.  And that was the light bulb moment.  Persistence is the real key to the kingdom.

The cancer journey is a grueling marathon.  I don't know that I go a day without a nagging thought in my mind, wondering about every ache and pain, or being REMINDED by every ache and pain, that I've been carved up and put back together, or reminded, when I forget a word in the middle of a sentence, that chemo brain is lingering.  But I keep showing up, like Vivian keeps showing up at the gym, and I push through when it's hard, like she pushes through when it's hard.  And we also honor our limitations and take breaks when we need to.  And we learn from each other.

p.s. her head coach asked for the mentality coach's info for other girls on the team.  She repeatedly said how impressed she was with the change we saw in Vivian.