Resilience and Resistance

Five ideas to help reframe life's challenges

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Hello dear readers, I hope this finds you well!

It’s been a hot minute since I wrote to you last, as my life took a happy twist around six months ago, and it feels like I’m only just catching my breath.

I write to you today sat at my desk in north London, gently bouncing my heavy frame and swollen belly on a birthing ball, in what used to be my office, but which is now slowly morphing into a room to welcome the imminent arrival of my daughter.

It feels surreal to be writing this as exactly one year ago, I was being wheeled out of surgery at a London hospital, having undergone an operation to remove the remains of my fifth pregnancy. A month later, I was back in that very same hospital ward, this time suffering from post-op complications (or “retained products of conception” as it’s tactfully described in medical language) and was booked in for yet another surgery. About a week after that, I had a mental breakdown. The cumulative effect of six years of exhaustion, panic, worry, effort, grief, and hormones cascaded over me. One night, I collapsed in a heap on the kitchen floor, and simply couldn’t get up.

At the time I’d felt a total lack of control – over my body, my mind, and my future – and my subconscious didn’t know how to process it. But I knew, deep down, that there are always things we can control in life, from our mindset, our responses, our actions, and our choices. So slowly, over the course of a few months, I picked myself up and started reviewing my options.

I explored alternative routes to creating a family, such as egg donation or adoption, whilst gently coaching myself into giving it one more try. That fact that one year on, aged 43, I’m just a few days shy of being 9 months pregnant with a healthy and naturally conceived pregnancy is a testament to the power of keeping going when it feels like you’ve done all you can. Of keeping faith and staying determined on a course of action, despite setbacks, and when it feels all hope is lost. These last few years of my life, as challenging as they have been, have also taught me a whole series of incredibly useful lessons. Namely, that we are more in control of our subjective experiences than we tell ourselves, that we always have choices, and that life is full of surprises, so you should never give up hope.

As soon as this pregnancy hit three months and was confirmed viable, my ability to interact with the outside world dramatically reduced (around the time of my last Substack post!). A baby was on its way, and I needed to sort my life out, pronto. A writer’s income can be financially precarious, so I took a six-month consultancy job at an NGO, advising on campaign strategy and political communications like the good old days when that was what I did for my career. My partner and I decided to get married and organised a beautiful wedding for our closest family and friends, which joyfully blended the rituals and traditions of our mixed Iranian, Pakistani and British heritages. And I immersed myself in the kitchen, working diligently to finish my next book which is currently with the copy editor and is due to be published in Spring 2025. More on that soon!

Me at 34 weeks pregnant!

But going inwards was only possible to a certain extent these last six months, in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In the early days of the war, as the world reeled from the horror of the Hamas attack on October 7^th, I saw some truly terrible takes on Substack and felt I had to disengage with the platform. As someone who has worked extensively on this issue for the best part of 20 years, both professionally whilst working for a human rights charity, and also with my own books and writing, I knew immediately the kind of response we were likely to see from an Israeli army under a Netanyahu government, and so decided to spend my limited time online in spaces where I felt I could have more influence.

So back to Instagram and X it was, sharing what I could and trying to help others feel engaged and motivated on the issue too. I went to demonstrations, wrote to elected representatives, sent money to charities and had my heart broken repeatedly, as so many of us have done, watching the brutal dehumanisation of a whole population and the hypocrisy of the political leaders in the USA and UK who have endorsed and actively supported these war crimes.

The distress of seeing all the brutal suffering on our screens has felt at odds with my own internal joy. For growing this precious, much yearned for new life inside me, whilst watching Palestinian children be bombed, mutilated, and forcibly starved, has been incredibly hard to make sense of. I remember one morning, running the kitchen tap to pour myself a glass of water whilst feeling the baby kick, and recalling a UNICEF press release I read the previous day which described how Palestinian babies were dying of dehydration. Not for the first (or last) time during this awful war, I broke down in tears imagining how I would feel if my child was begging me for a glass of water and I had nothing I could give them. And I felt sickened by politicians who were watching what we were watching, had the power to stop it, and simply were choosing to look away. Rather than making me feel I had to disengage, these moments of raw emotion made me realise the importance of staying connected to this issue. For our collective humanity and our planet’s future depends on not looking away when we feel discomfort, not numbing from witnessing the pain and suffering of others, but rather turning towards them and offering our support and solidarity.

Ceasefire demonstration, London, November 2023

When I first had the idea for this Substack, it was born from the idea that it’s in the most testing of times – be that personal or political – that we need to learn how to cultivate hope and resilience. Living isn’t always easy. We all go through heartbreak, financial insecurity, health issues, rejection, grief, loss and face injustices of different kinds, and I’ve increasingly been interested by what we can do in these moments to keep ourselves afloat.

I don’t have all the answers but I do know that the following suggestions have helped me, both in the last six years of fertility challenges and in the last six months of witnessing the violence in the Middle East. Perhaps a few of them will help you too.

1. Focus on what you can control, let go of what you can’t

Much of our worrying comes feeling a lack of control over a situation. But what we focus on determines what we feel. This means that purposefully changing our focus can dramatically shift our sense of wellbeing. For example, if you have no idea when a particular health ailment will heal, you can focus on what you can do to make yourself more comfortable in the short term. If you feel powerless in the face of watching bombs drop on civilians, you can focus on the levers available to you in your immediate vicinity that can shift opinion and influence those in power.

2. Practice re-framing

I first learnt about reframing when I did my NLP coaching training a decade ago and it remains one of the most useful tools I come back to. Re-framing involves mentally placing an event or experience in a new context, as by doing this, you can change your emotional response to it. So say you apply for a job and don’t get it, your initial response is likely to include feelings of rejection, disappointment, and frustration. That’s all fine and to be expected. But you don’t need to stay in that space for long if you use a reframe. Could you see this as an opportunity to gather more skills? Is this a sign you need to shift your working habits? Is this giving you information about a particular employer that you didn’t have before?

How we respond to any difficult situation depends on the frame through which we see it – so a painful breakup can become a lucky escape, an electoral loss can mean an opportunity to change tactics, a war can be an opportunity to amplify a message. The more you practice reframing, the easier you find coping with whatever life throws at you.

3. Ask yourself the right questions

AKA, ask a crappy question and you’ll get a crappy answer. In times of stress, we tend to focus inward, asking ourselves a lot of unhelpful questions. Instead of how asking yourself How can this be happening? or What’s wrong with me? I find it more helpful to ask myself questions that focus on my responses and actions. This could include, What can I do differently? What lesson is this teaching me? Who can I ask for help? Or What will move me towards my goal? I used this a lot with my fertility challenges. Instead of Why me? I asked What next? Asking the right questions focusses your mind on better answers, which then gives you something to act on.

4. Take the long view

We live in times of instant gratification, wanting immediate effect for the results for our actions. But life doesn’t unfold in that way and much suffering comes from not accepting that. Practicing patience is one of the most powerful tools to navigate us through challenging times as it can help us gain a long-view of personal or political problems and how, sometimes, things just take the time they need to. From a political perspective it helps me to remember that struggles for justice and freedom take time and it’s called ‘the struggle” for a reason – it’s not meant to be easy to change deeply embedded structural issues! But the same premise can be applied for a myriad of personal issues be they in intimate relationships, dealing with children or navigating change in the workplace. Last year, I recorded a podcast episode about the lessons learned from the Iraq war protests where I sat down with two friends who were involved in those huge anti-war demonstrations 20 years ago to discuss how we may not have stopped the war, but we certainly changed history. I’ve found the themes we discussed really helpful when looking at the wave of solidarity with the Palestinian people we are seeing now. In case you missed it, do have a listen.

5. Find Community

Connecting with others enables us to tap into a shared feeling of something bigger than ourselves – which is where resilience and hope often come from. For me, the times when I have felt most hopeful about in recent months is when I’ve attended the big Palestine solidarity demonstrations in London. Being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of kind, compassionate, peace-orientated people, of all ages, races, religions and backgrounds, helped restore my faith in humanity and gave me the energy to keep going. I felt the same with the online forums where women talked about fertility or pregnancy loss. They comforted me at a time when felt no one really understood what I was going through and gave me ideas on what I could try next. So go out and find your community or support group on whatever issue you are struggling with, be that online or in person. I promise you’ll feel so much better for it.

And on that note, I’ll be offline for a while as I immerse myself in my new community and start the adventure of motherhood!

I imagine you’ll still hear from me sporadically, but I’m aiming to restart the newsletter on a more regular basis after my maternity leave.

For paying subscribers, this means I’ll continuing to pause payments and you’ll pick up your subscription where you left off.

I look forward to connecting with you all on the other side with more stories, interviews, recipes and more!

Wishing you all a blossoming spring and joyful summer.

Yasmin xx