Many people are getting their first injection of the COVID-19 vaccine. While our immune systems accept the vaccine our minds are also accepting the realities of a post-COVID and conflicted world. Perhaps with this vaccine we can build not only on strong immune resistance, but perhaps a mental immune resistance as well? How do we take realities of 2020 and learn from them as we look towards the future? As author and poet Sonya Renee Taylor said, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal, other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment, one that fits all of humanity and nature.”
How can we build resilience to the realities of current day and the future? According to Webster’s dictionary resilience is an ability to recover from or adjust to misfortune or change. Some key components of building resilience might include: being aware of and utilizing skills to cope with strong negative emotions, nourishing supportive relationships, using problem-solving skills, practicing good communication skills, and one’s own self-efficacy: the belief that you can manage or cope with a challenge.