by J. Anna Looney
Resilience is the optimal response to the blows life deals us. Disappointments, inevitable losses and failures are part of the human condition. Sometimes resilience happens swiftly and naturally; we get back on our feet after falling down on the playground or being thrown from a horse. There’s a more complex emotional resilience that comes after having your heart broken in an early love affair. Then there are the dark times when the blow is life-changing; we need support and understanding from close friends, mentors or counselors to adapt after a job loss, bankruptcy, divorce or death – all difficulties that likely require longer recovery time before springing back. The “school of hard knocks” aptly describes the array of challenges that comes to all of us.
Resilience enables us to carry on; it speaks of determination and character, self-confidence and hope.
Over my 74 years of life, I’m grateful that innate resilience helped me survive problems of life. The catalogue of challenges doesn’t matter as much as the way resilience served me through difficulties with family, schooling, career and marriage. Yet the more I think about specific times of struggle and suffering, the more conscious I am of the valuable lessons that came as a result of these difficult experiences.
The transformation of my thinking about this bumpy road to elder adulthood occurred during the Conscious Elderhood retreats I attended in 2024 and 2025.
Shifting my perspective to ‘own’ my age rather than covering it up or denying it was the necessary first step in this process. Then opening my eyes, heart and mind to acknowledge my suffering was the second. Rather than shame and despair, I began to consider my failures as better teachers than any successes I’d achieved. Joan Borysenko wrote in her 1996 book A Woman’s Book of Life: The Biology, Psychology, and Spirituality of the Feminine Life Cycle: “Resilient people cope by finding some positive meaning in their suffering, whereas despairing people often feel victimized.” With acceptance and openness, I was primed for beginning my education in elder wisdom.
Post Traumatic Growth Gave Me New Direction
If resilience is a healthy process for coping with human struggles, what is post traumatic growth? Psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun coined this term in the 1990s while researching trauma survivors. Post-traumatic growth describes how humans can transform their suffering into goodness. If we suffer trauma but deny or refuse to acknowledge it, the potential to learn from it is lost. I’ve been in school long enough to know this is not a lesson I should waste.
Trauma is not something lightly discussed. It is not our business to compare traumas with others like badges of honor, nor to discount or judge what someone identifies as their trauma. Trauma can become redemptive when the person suffering recognizes its impact as a force for good rather than a crushing experience. To me, Viktor Frankl and Eleanor Roosevelt are two heroes for turning their personal suffering to the greater good for humankind.
Retreat as Midwife: My Experience of Post Traumatic Growth
Attending two Conscious Eldering retreats led by Ron Pevny was life-changing as I struggled to find direction for spiritual growth and clarity around the work I felt called to do. The first retreat in 2024 in the New Mexico desert allowed protected time to step away from the busyness and distraction of my life. The ranch itself felt infused with an austere spiritual quality, a far cry from commercial comforts of the popular self-help culture. Beginning on the first evening, Ron invited the 12 of us to enter a sacred space where we could show up exactly as we are. Our diverse group of seekers — people with years of leadership experience and expertise— began to open up to allow unprocessed grief to emerge; individuality and career accomplishments fell away. I sensed a kinship to my companions because, essentially, we were more alike than different.
Together with Dennis Stamper, Ron described the days ahead. No handouts or power point presentation prepared us for the transformative time we had begun. We started with a ritual of connection; passing a cord from one person to the next, we named our intentions for the retreat as we knotted the cord to signify our hopes for being there. We took turns wearing the cord necklace during the week, holding each other with intentions of love and support. It was up to each of us to find what we were looking for, for bringing the buried longings of our lives to light. Like midwives, Ron and Dennis helped us along, but the labor was ours to do.
Beginning each day with drumming, poetry and meditation, we listened deeply and generously to each other. Strong reactions came up as sensitive nerves were touched. We were surrendering to Spirit, to Universe, to Creator, to our retreat leaders whose wisdom and sensitivity to the group dictated the order.
The culminating event of the retreat was the solitary day on the land. Rituals with smudging, fasting and silence led up to this profoundly moving rite of passage – a kind of vision quest that offered a time of reckoning, forgiveness, insight and renewal.
In the spaciousness of that day, I was able hear my Inner Guide. I moved through sorrows and deep regrets I’d never spoken aloud. Anger came up, as well as joy and gratitude. I owned, with humility. my own responsibility for the traumas I’d suffered. As the day drew to a close, I felt guided to draw a map of my life, a spiritual resume that put the pieces together, transforming the suffering into meaning. I felt a strong conviction that the failures and harms I’d done, as well as those I’d suffered, were necessary preparation for the work I’m called to do. These dark times and traumas had broken me down to make way for wisdom and compassion. It was as if the dawn came, and I was emerging blessed, like Jacob after a night of wrestling with the angel.
Without a doubt, I saw that the traumas were preparation for this time in my life when my gifts, intuition and experience would be used in the service of others.
The vision I had late on that day became the blueprint for the next year. I left that retreat filled with deep gratitude to the Universe as teacher and a realization that my traumas and suffering were, in fact, the most powerful route to self- compassion, forgiveness and, love.
Returning for the Next Step Retreat
Returning to Ghost Ranch for the Next Steps Retreat felt like a reunion even though 10 of my companions there were new to me. As before, the initial sharing opened us to become a safe container for each other. Building on the awareness gained at the first retreat, we considered where our passions were leading us – what was lighting us up, as Howard Thurman wrote – as the best way to find meaning and satisfaction. The message from my Inner Guide was to remember the joy, take stock of the changes and the growth – that powerful post-traumatic growth that came from the first retreat– and recommit to finding ways to be of service for healing and love.
During my solo day on the land this time, I received a strong image of a broken heart being mended, the stitches becoming visible scars. To mend the heart back into a whole, the Creator must pierce that heart again to joins the sundered edges. This kind of heart surgery, with evidence of repair, is a cause for celebration rather than regret. In my journal, I drew my broken heart decorated with gemstones, sparkles and lights. The message that day was not to hide my trauma and brokenness, not to deny or excuse the pain, but to recognize how this suffering has made me more loving and understanding, wiser and kinder. For healing and growth like this, there is no shortcut.
It is in seeing the trauma of life as instructive and constructive that is grace in this stage of life. I am filled with gratitude for the path that has brought me here, a survivor, a resilient elder who like Jacob may walk with a limp after wrestling an angel.
J. Anna Looney, Ph.D. is a retired sociologist enjoying Oregon in this new chapter of life. Delighted to have time and energy for meaningful service, Anna facilitates Mind Body Medicine skills groups for cancer survivors and caregivers. She serves on the board of Authentic Hope Center for Peace and Empowerment and spends time volunteering for hospice. Anna has discovered the profound joy in art making with friends. Contact her at annalooney22@gmail.com for more information.
