I have reached a new understanding of my own relationship to hardship and trauma. I want to talk about that for a moment, in case it speaks to some of you, too. (THREAD)

First of all, none of the bad things I've ever been through in my life, and there's been a few, none of them have ever made me stronger. None of them. https://twitter.com/ShaulaEvans/status/1328063562657394688

Hardship has made me softer.

The idea that hardship could make someone softer is strongly antithetical to the official narratives in American culture around trauma and hard times.

Let me explain, using the analogy of swordsmithing.

When you forge a sword, an important step is annealing the blade. Annealing is a process of heating metal quickly and cooling it softly to make the metal ductile.

Ductile means flexible or pliant.

Don't you want a hard sword, not a soft sword?

Well, a super hard sword will shatter on impact. So no, that's useless.

But a sword that's soft enough to be flexible can absorb the impact of a blow and remain intact.

If I harden up in the face of adversity, I shatter. That's all there is to it. (Your mileage may vary.)

But if I soften in the face of adversity, I can better absorb the blows and survive.

It's about bending vs breaking.

Okay, nice analogy, but what does softening into hard times mean?

On one hand, it means permission to fail.

On the other, it means letting go of artificial rigidity (and toxic masculinity) and sinking into my best self: being generous, compassionate, non-judgemental.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like 2020 keeps asking me to be my best self, and then coming back to me saying, "I know you can still do better than that."

American culture encourages, celebrates and rewards a lot of behaviours and attitudes that aren't helping right now: rigidity, anger, selfishness, fear.

And yet the people around me having the hardest times are also the most compassionate, generous and soft.

I don't begrudge anyone doing anything (that doesn't harm others, and ideally not yourselves either) that's getting you through this. We're all doing our best and working out how to survive 2020 as go.

What I'm saying is when the world around you is telling you that you need to be stronger and harder to survive, those messages might be wrong, and being softer and gentler might be what you need.

There's a lot to be said for bending instead of breaking.

Give yourself permission to bend if you can.

Anyway, annealing is a lovely metallurgical term that I am finding to be a great analogy for how I respond to hard times, and I wanted to share it, in case it speaks to any of you, too. xo

I put together a kofi account to cover the costs of the tools I use to run my Twitter account. (I'll put the full story in a thread someday soon.) If my work has helped you or you'd like to help me support writers & artists, here's the link. http://ko-fi.com/shaula