Thoughts on resilience...

-

I have been thinking a lot about resilience this week – partly inspired by the fact that my 16 year old daughter is, as I type, is trekking 16 miles across the Yorkshire dales.  As anyone who has met her will know, Amy is not an outdoors person but nonetheless she has donned her walking boots, her waterproofs, her woolly hat, her brave face and is getting it done. 

However my thoughts on resilience have come from something much more wide spread.  From knowing that so many of the people I spend my time with, have had a difficult week full of anxiety, loss, disappointment and sadness.  This has been the case for both members of the youth theatre and also people from the rest of the walks of life I encounter week to week.  I’ve been saddened by this but also incredibly impressed by how some of them…even after the toughest time bounce back and look for the positives in what they are going through or to the potential for happier times in the future. 

Of course the need for significant amounts of resilience to deal with the mind, heart and back breaking things life flings at you hasn’t just applied to people this week, it’s continual.  The challenges individuals face day to day are many and significant…I see so many people managing to cope despite being confronted with things that could so easily cripple them.  This observation married with the specific struggles of this week got me thinking about how wonderful it would be if a formula could be discovered that would capture the ingredients for resilience.  Within youth theatre I genuinely believe that some of those ingredients are readily available, I know that the sessions help…I would just like to help more.

Obviously there is no magic formula but there are patterns I see in those that manage to keep their head above water in the storm.  Of course no one manages to be brilliant at being able to bounce back all the time but I am happy to know people who are pretty damn good at it a lot of the time…

So this blog is an accolade to all of those that see the joy through the sadness, remain reflective and thoughtful in the face of difficult situations, avoid ricocheting through states of aggression and defensiveness, resist blaming others or themselves, see the people they encounter as individuals not heroes, villains or victims, are empathetic and curious as they try to make sense of a complex world and who find laughter in the darkest of corners.  You are inspirational and wonderful and I’m privileged to have you in my life… 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chloe's Leavers Blog - finally :)

-
  Please excuse how this was written, I do a very silly drama school course, and I haven’t had to write more than my name in 9 months. I’m sat in my silly dorm bed writing me this on my DSA laptop (a win for the mentally ill girlies), realising how utterly bad my ability to Words has become. Anyway.. Leaving YTYT was one of the oddest experiences of my life, and yet, I don’t remember it at all. I’d spent the last few years, waving off some of my closest friends as they went on to conquer their dreams, in a tearful circle, yet all I have is a fuzzy memory and a video saved in an instagram highlight. I’d sell a kidney to try and bring back that experience, to do my final show unclouded by new medication and intrusive thoughts, but as that isn’t possible, I thought I’d finally write my leavers blog, even if it is a year late. I started Yew Tree in 2017, as a way to explore drama outside of the agonising GCSE setting, and across the years, it became a lifeline for me, providing confidence,
Read more

Arwen's Leavers blog

-
I made a start writing this leaver’s blog when I was on a bloody needed holiday over a month ago, on the glorious Isle of Islay in Scotland. I’m re-writing it now, because I think it was naff to be honest. And I’m not in the same mindset as I was then. Also I might have had a few too many drams of whisky whilst writing it there, so there’s that. A line I’ll keep from it however is: “How am I meant to do justice and summarise in my writing the enormity of an impact that Yewtree has had on me these last 5-ish years?” How can I articulate all the skills that I've learnt and developed? The experiences I’ve had? There’s so much, where and what do I start on? So I’ll do just that, and put some of the skills I’ve learnt into use: “You can’t be a creative, a critic, and an editor at the same time” But in fairness - I don’t think I could share and articulate all those things. And I’m not sure that I want to, they’re for me. I can’t put that expectation on myself. The past year I’ve felt as
Read more

Celebrating the past in the present...

-
  Next year Yew Tree Youth Theatre will be 30 years old.   We haven’t quite decided how we will celebrate - any suggestions would be gratefully received. No doubt there will be some nostalgic perambulating down memory lane and some haphazard but joyous celebrating of three decades of creativity we have shared.   Some variation of those two themes would feel fitting. This blog however is something different. This blog is a celebration of the present of those who attended YTYT in the past. Alumni, graduates, previous members – I can never seem to find the right term – but whatever word is chosen I know for sure they are part of the fabric of the youth theatre and I’m grateful to have known all of them, mainly because I have learnt so much from them.   I also can’t put a number on how many people have spent significant time with YTYT over the last 29 years.   I know we started with a group of 8 and now have about 80 members, I know at our peak just before COVID we had about 130 young pe
Read more