Most times natural and man-made disasters make us discover how life adversities make us strong. Enduring different distressing torments eventually change us for good. Though we wished we could have been spared these adversities, the resultant experience strengthened our resilience along with a new perspective of life.
It’s important to develop and mature while going through these personal qualities pain deeply. For instance, the widows and widowers who finally adapted best to the loss were those who accepted the pain and grief of the circumstances without being overawed by them. It’s a growth-related attitude that allows us to take into consideration life’s difficulties, and embrace how life adversities make us strong.
In the face of the most terrifying ordeal, most times people recover and excel in the long run. Because as it turns out, some of the people who have gone through the worst experiences have a lot to divulge about that deep and powerfully rewarding journey that is called a ‘worthy life’.
True Life Stories Of How Life Adversities Make Us Strong
How life adversities keep us strong manifests in the stories of Chioma and Bisi. The examples of two women determined to face and ride through the different storms and hurdles that come every day as they live through their decisions; the spirit to face up to fresh challenges each new dawn, to take them as they come and throw up solutions that make such adversities bearable.
Chioma’s Story
Take the story of Chioma, a young woman, who refused to be bogged down by the daily problems that come with amputation. Read her unedited story:
Have you ever considered typing with one hand? I do not mean doing it for the fun of it or by choice but as the only alternative. Well, that is exactly what I am doing right now. Am I not lucky? Believe it or not, I am because there are many out there left with no choice at all. What about cooking, bathing, driving, writing, cleaning, etc with the same means mentioned above? Do not ever dream of it although sometimes it could be fun. Just for your information, I do more than these with just my right hand. I am so lucky I am a right-handed lady.
Before 11 December 2007, life to me meant nothing more than catching fun but today, I realise that we are living just a borrowed life we have no control. As a sales representative, my job entails a lot of travelling which I do on a weekly basis. So was the situation on 11 December 2007, when I left Aba for Calabar.
Hardly had I driven past Ikot Ekpene when it happened. I heard a thud-like sound from the backside of my car, and the next thing I knew the steering became uncontrollable. I navigated right to clear the road since I was on the highway but lo and behold, it was the back tyre. Before I knew it, I was battling with getting out of the car which had already entered a gully. There is this habit of traveling alone, which I had done on countless occasions but as God will have it on this fateful day, I had company and that actually saved my life, thanks to Amara.
Amara is a friend and former neighbour whom I had travelled with on that fateful day. I remembered Amara helping me out of the car while I staggered to sit at a nearby bush track. I felt blood drip from my forehead to my shirt but made nothing out of it. While I sat by the bush path, I felt so weak and needed to lie down. Utter horror, I noticed that my left hand had been cut from the wrist, that is, my palm was gone with the fingers.
What a gory sight to see – blood gushing from the dangling tissue-like stuff which formed part of the remains of my left hand. With Amara’s assistance, people gathered, and not too long, help came from someone whom to date, I do not know. The young man carried me, as well as Amara, to Ikot Ekpene General Hospital which happens to be the nearest hospital. The doctors there only succeeded in stitching my forehead and advised me I should be rushed to the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital without delay.
To cut a long story short, I lost a lot of blood while in transit to Calabar on the same day. Three days later, my hand was amputated and I have come to accept my fate as an amputee. I have not allowed the new situation I found myself in to weigh me down. If not for God’s mercy, I would have been dead but since I am alive, I have vowed to make the best out of the situation.
I want you to learn that in life, it is only you that can limit yourself. Make the best use of your situation and always put a smile on your face. Your inward expression forms your appearance and the better you put yourself in the right perspective, the better your life will be. By being yourself and managing your situation properly, you see that people are encouraged and you are better appreciated.
To all amputees out there, do not feel limited in any way. While there is the hope of using prosthetics when the need arises, be yourself and do not feel discouraged. Your inner strength comes from your reasoning and not your body parts. Avoid depression, nothing kills faster than it. I am a living testimony that is why I take it upon myself to reach out to as many as will have access to this piece. I pray to God to give us the grace to perform better.
Bisi’s story
For Bisi, a terrible experience gave her one valuable positive outlook: assurance about what is right and wrong and about her priorities in life. Though she had lost her father and her husband, one year apart, it was the death of her very close brother that dealt the most devastating blow.
The death of her brother happened ten years ago but still hurts so much. More because it was sudden, and unexpected, and he didn’t live long enough to see his children grow. It is a story about how life adversities make us strong.
Now, Bisi sees life from a very different perspective than before. She knows the difference between what’s important and what’s not. She appreciates her family more, while material possessions have taken a back seat. And a lot of things that used to be important are less so. There is a simplicity about her dress, relationships, and business deals. Nothing is a do-or-die anymore. She does what she can within her stress limit. If it is too much and cranking her up, she lets go.
The reality is that she’s on a temporary mission in this place called ‘earth’, and once accomplished she zooms off. It is the legacy left that becomes indestructible. For her, the most important lesson of life is to be remembered for something positive at the end of it all.
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
How life adversities make us strong usually also manifests in people who often say that after diversities their lives are transformed involuntarily. While their old values or habits evaporate in an instant. People who have experienced a traumatic incident said that it ultimately had positive long-term effects on their lives. This is because the negative events have the ability to shake up the normalcy in their lives, which opens the door for change. It is either you choose to become depressed, desperately rely on pick-me-ups, or you could become a much better person.
However, making the effort to come fully to terms with the new reality takes a definite effort. The will to be able to get on with this process is what separates those who grow through adversity and those who are destroyed by it. It is a strong showing of how adversities make us strong.
5 Remarkable Qualities Of Adversity Survivors
Ability to integrate events into a life story
Remarkably, people who make the most of adversity are not the strongest or the most practical. Rather they are ordinary. What makes them different is that they’re able to integrate the event into their life story. There’s an eagerness to accept the painful process to review who they are while abandoning an old view that has become obsolete. In the end, they may find themselves freed in ways they never imagined.
Ability to tolerate and forgive
The survivors of adversities frequently admit their better sense of tolerance and forgiveness of others can bring peace to earlier distressed relationships. Material things quickly take the back seat after a crisis. While family and friends become supreme, enabling them to reappraise life alongside new priorities.
Ability to push fear into the back burner
Those people who have grown from adversity often feel much less fear, despite the frightening things they have been through. This is yet another example of how life adversities make us strong. These people are surprised by their own strength. They exude confidence that they can handle whatever else life throws at them. Just like Chioma and Bisi, many adversity survivors also feel transformed by a sense of deep connection to others that is intensely rewarding on its own.
The ability not to take life for granted
People don’t say that what they went through was wonderful. They didn’t even plan to grow from it. They were just trying to take one day at a time. But looking back they gained more than expected. And based on the trauma they went through, they are now aware of how tough life can be and as such shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Ability to exhibit a high sense of maturity
The capacity to simultaneously embrace both loss and growth is an ordinary part of life, a complex, heartbreaking emotional state that is perhaps the greatest reward of maturity. Even positive memories of the past are nostalgic. There are incredible richness and warmth in those memories, but also sadness, knowing that they are tied to a particular moment in your life and that you’ll never have those experiences again. They have now become memories.
Bottom Line
How life diversities make us strong allows emotional rewards to compensate for the pain and difficulty of adversity. This perspective doesn’t remove what happened, but it puts it all in a different viewpoint: that it’s possible to live an extraordinarily rewarding life even within the limitations and battles we face. In some form or another, we all must go through this realisation. We are not going to be the person we thought we were, but here is who we are going to be instead, and that turns out to be a pretty worthy life.
https://www.amazon.ca/Waving-Wind-Real-Life-Stories-ebook/dp/B00I5VQ18G
https://medium.com/how-to-do-you/how-to-deal-with-the-ups-and-downs-in-your-life-5ccff5f31624
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