Recently I had the opportunity to write about resilience for the beautiful “letters from love” project that Liz Gilbert founded.  I have been pondering ideas of forgiveness and resilience in relationship for some time now. I have the honor to work with couples who struggle to forgive what they feel are unforgiveable transgressions in their relationships.  Sometimes they are able to find that soft squishy inner pulp and the soft edges that I describe in my little blurb on resilience. Other times they cannot. For personal reasons they are unable or unwilling to let go. I don’t judge them. We are all where we are in the fabric of our relationships to self and other for a reason. We each have our own pace, our own style of learning, opening, and relating. None are right or wrong. They just are. When we let go of judging our partners and friends for where they are, when we stop believing that what we think, where we are, what we know about our journey is what is right for all others we are then truly able to see, hear, and feel the ones we love without the obscured lens of our wounding and bias.

     Below are my thoughts on resilience. I believe that resilience and forgiveness are two sides to the same coin. You need one to fully experience the other. I could be wrong. I’m not attached. It’s just an idea I thought I’d share with you here.

     Forgiveness and resilience in relationship is not about our surviving whatever rupture occurred in relationship to ourselves and others. The idea of a relationship “surviving” does not have the soft outer edges and squishy inner pulp that resilience does. When our edges are still jagged, and we are mistrustful, critical, judgmental and use unkind voices that lash out and wound those around us that is when we can differentiate survival from the healing heart of resilience and forgiveness.  

     Resilience is not bouncing back like a full-blown basketball into the heights of success and accomplishment. Resilience is soft, slow, tender, filled with pain and joy and awareness and courage. Resilience is not about walking away, overcoming, getting beyond, or climbing up, out or over. Resilience is about putting yourself in the cauldron of circumstance and allowing the elements of your life to seep into your knowing, and seeing, and feeling. It is the way when you rise to the surface of the soup of your life like the skim at the top, you have taken all that life has given you, allowed it to seep into your pores and still dripping wet with life’s saucy offerings – you love, you cry, you fail, you celebrate. You feel all that there is to feel. You walk towards – not away from. You go through – not over. You walk beside – not beyond. You climb in the direction that brings you closer to yourself, closer to those you love and even those you don’t. Resilience is not enduring tight jawed, tight fisted, and tough. It is absorbing and assimilating and still finding Love wherever you are.

Ponder This:

Think of a time where you and a loved one fought about something. A trust was broken, feelings were hurt, the relationship was wounded. Did you “survive” the incident, walk away and brush it under the rug as just ‘one of those things’ in relationship that happens? Were you able to take the time to deeply listen to, hear, and honor where your partner was coming from? The ways that they experienced the event? Were you able to take it in, forgive and then feel yourself in the soft pulp of resilience with yourself and that person? If not, ask yourself why. Get to the heart of the matter inside yourself. There’s no right outcome but your willingness to spend time in the soup of life’s circumstances, sticky inner workings and many jagged edges may offer you gifts of growth and healing.

If you are interested in a session with me, please reach out either via my website:

heartofthemattercoaching.us where you will find a contact me form,

or via text at 415-595-2739

I am available for virtual or in person sessions.

Nina Vincent

Heart of the Matter Coaching

333 Miller Ave. Mill Valley CA 94941