Taken in Winston Salem earlier this month.

Fellow artist and all around inspiring soul Marisa Haedike sent me an email recently…OK, way back in June…asking me to write about how I deal with adversity.  Unfortunately this will be a really short entry because I just haven’t had to deal with much adversity in my life.

[Falls on the floor laughing hysterically...]

Smartass comment aside, I don’t think I have been handed an undue amount of adversity and in most cases have ultimately reached a place where I am thankful for whatever adversities I have faced.  I think most would agree that it is sometimes in our darkest moments where we find the rarest jewels, those life lessons that stay with us from that moment forward and enable us to create a better, more authentic life for ourselves.  There is usually a silver lining, as they say.

I have learned a few tricks along the way, and because I am in one of those make a list kind of moods, here it goes…

* I take responsibility for my choices and my actions.  It takes time and energy to blame others, point the finger and bemoan all the things that aren’t right and/or did not go the way we want them to.  Plain and simple, life is not easy and is often times painfully unfair, but no matter what we always have a choice to accept what IS and do our best to move through it.

* I try to ask for what I need.  During one of the most difficult periods of my life, a dear friend looked at me and said, "Just RECEIVE," and I totally understood how important it was for me to do that.  Reaching out to others is something I actually don’t do easily, but I’ve gotten better over the years.

* If possible, I get enough sleep, exercise and eat well.  Sounds mundane, but if our bodies are getting worn down along with whatever else is going haywire in our lives all emotions are magnified tenfold.

* I practice patience.  With all of the mystery health issues I have been dealing with this year, my number one strategy was to be patient.  There were moments when I broke down with frustration at not having answers and having to see more doctors, but for the most part I allowed the process to unfold as best as it could, and while it has all taken time, problems have gotten solved and I am taking better care of myself than ever.

* I cry.  Again, not so easy for me to do, but I have learned that when I let myself go to that sobbing, weepy, messy place, I always come out of it feeling….clean.

* I do my best to extend compassion to others, particularly those who are frustrating me, upsetting me, hurting me, etc.  There is always room for this, and even if I cannot continue to be in relationships with certain people, I can still let go of them from a compassionate place.  Letting go from a place of anger is not really letting go; that will always come back to haunt me.

* Last but not least, I embrace uncertainty.  I believe certainty and security in life are myths; they actually do not exist, at least not on any permanent basis.  Through very focused practice and conscious effort, I have grown more and more comfortable with those tense, sticky spaces in life that are full of unknowns and vague answers.  Everything in life is constantly in flux, and I have learned that times of adversity will also end, even if I don’t know what that will look like or how I’ll get there.

For more thoughts on adveristy, listen to Marisa’s podcast on the subject, and to learn more about how this topic came up in the first place, visit this site.