Stories of Resilience: A Novel Reflects Our Complex Relationships and Wounding

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

A psychotherapist draws from her client experiences to craft a novel inspired by human courage and hope in the face of painful circumstances

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After stopping to smell my twentieth flower, I took a deep breath and headed to the mossy spot I knew Josh liked. I found him lying with his arm over his eyes, his distressed pose. I sat down next to him, my stomach in knots.

            “Sorry, Josh.”

            “Okay.”

            “It won’t happen again.” At least not for a while, and hopefully he would be the one to kiss me next time.

            “Okay.”

He was lying perfectly still, probably afraid to move around me now. I was a bundle of jittery nerves, sitting there rocking my legs from side to side, tapping my feet together.

            “Can we go back to normal?”

            “Okay.”

            “That’s not very convincing.”

            He moved his arm to look at me. “My life is so not normal right now, Kai. And you just made it weirder. I would love for things to go back to normal, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.” He put his arm back over his eyes. I felt like I was going to cry but held it in.

            “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

            “Don’t bullshit me, Kai. If you want to apologize, at least be straight.”

“That will make it even weirder. I’m trying to make it easier and better for you.” The way I handled Dad wasn’t working here. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do whatever you want.”

            He sat up, looked at me, then looked off into the distance. “I know you have feelings for me, and you know I don’t feel that way.”

He paused. I was pretty much holding my breath because it felt like breathing might lead to crying, and I really didn’t want to cry.

“But I do care about you, and I hope you know that too.”

I let out a long breath, feeling like this might actually be okay.

He picked up a branch and poked at the moss and dirt, then added, “You just have to stay in your lane, okay? We’re like cousins, siblings, friends. That’s how it is.”

I picked up a stick and dug in the moss too, thinking about that.

            “I’m okay with friends. And, like, second cousins twice removed. Not siblings. Can that be how it is?”

            He grinned and squinted over at me. “Okay, second cousins twice removed.” He tossed the branch aside, lay back down, and put his arm over his eyes again. “Your dad was not happy with me.”

            “Me neither, but he’s fine now. My dad likes to avoid messy stuff, so you’ll never hear about it again.” I dug in the dirt for a few minutes while we both pondered things.

            “You are a brave girl, Kai. And clever. You put yourself out there and get what you want most of the time, huh?”

            “Most of the time. Eventually. Sometimes I just have to be patient and wear people down.” I grinned and lay down on the moss next to Josh.

I felt different, older.

“This has been a weird day,” I said.

“You’re tellin’ me,” Josh answered.

“I had a talk with my mom that was different than ones we’ve had before, and this is different too, talking with you like this. But I talked to my dad and that was just the same. I don’t know, it’s just got me all confused.”

“Confused about what?” He turned his head toward me, his arm shading his face but not blocking his eyes now.

I kept looking up at the sky. Watching the light through the leaves made it easier to articulate my thoughts.

“Is it better to tell people what you think or to tell them what they want to hear?”

“Dang, that’s a serious question.” He rolled back into his contemplative position, arm over eyes. “I have no clue. I usually tell my dad what he wants to hear and do what he wants me to do, and my life goes along just fine. Then I stand up to him, and I get punched in the face and kicked out of the house.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Mom said I should use my voice, not worry about what other people want to hear, but then she told me what I should say to you and Dad, and it was what you both wanted to hear, not what I really wanted to say.” A breeze rustled the leaves above me, and I squinted as the sun poked through the fresh spaces.

“I usually tell my dad what he wants to hear because he fights with my mom when she says what she actually thinks,” I continued. “It works better my way, but I don’t really like how it feels. I came out here to tell you what you wanted to hear, but then I told you what I really thought and that felt better.” I rolled my head to look at him. “It’s confusing.”

“It’s confusing because it’s bullshit.”

“Is that your favorite word?” I teased.

“It’s my life right now,” he joked back, although it wasn’t really a joke.

“It’s like they say to do it one way, but they don’t really mean it and they definitely don’t do it that way,” I said.
            “I’ve been thinking about all this since my mom put me on that train in the middle of the night, and I still don’t have a clue,” Josh said. “The one thing I do know is that some people clearly don’t want to know what we’re thinking or how we feel. Some people definitely want us to tell them what they want to hear. And if we want to live with those people without causing problems, we better do it their way.”

“You’re going to do it that way with your dad?”

“You bet, but I’m also going to get out of there as soon as I possibly can. College, work, whatever, I’m out of there one year from now. I can keep my mouth shut for a year, but then I don’t want to be like that. I want to be someone who means what I say and does what feels right.”

“I want to be that kind of person too. Maybe just not with my dad.”

“Yeah, probably not with our dads.”

“But maybe with each other?”

“Maybe.” Josh peeked at me again. “As long as you stay in your lane.”

I smiled at him and looked back at the sky. I wasn’t going to say anything that wasn’t true, so I kept my mouth shut. I saw him shake his head a little, grinning at my intentional nonresponse.

            I was thinking all these deep and profound thoughts, but mostly—really, truly, predominantly—I was thinking about Josh lying next to me, how someday maybe he would reach over and take my hand or roll over and kiss me, but how right now it was nice to just lie here next to him and know that he knew what I was thinking and feeling and that he was still there beside me. He didn’t like it, it wasn’t ideal, but he was hanging in here with me, and that meant a lot.

***

When I started writing All I Know, I thought it was a love story between Kai and Josh, but I came to realize that the novel wasn’t their story, it was Kai’s story, of which Josh was only one part. Josh is the boy that Kai has always loved, their families connected since before they were born. Kai’s belief that she is destined to be with Josh is a defining part of her identity, especially after a devastating tragedy shakes her belief in most everything else in her life. Kai’s journey, though, is never really about whether or not she will end up with Josh. It is about cultivating faith in herself.

As I began to focus the novel more fully on Kai, I paradoxically and simultaneously expanded the development of her other relationships, and the book became something that was romantic, yet went beyond romantic love to encompass the many forms love takes—the depth of sibling bonds, the power of female friendships, the complexity of parent-child relationships, and the importance and challenge of loving oneself. All of these iterations of love are interwoven, and I hear stories every day that prove that.

I am both a psychotherapist and a writer, and that makes perfect sense to me, since I have always been captivated by people and their stories. My professional life is built around listening to stories, and every day I absorb tales of heartbreak and loss, trauma and tragedy, courage and resilience, and those stories are reflected in my writing.

I have also learned how common it is for childhood wounds and unmet needs to impact the way people show up in their adult relationships.

This is certainly true for Kai and Josh.

At the very start of the book, Kai recognizes that Kade, her twin brother, and Josh are the two main characters in her life, so it’s natural that her relationship with Kade influences the one she develops with Josh. Part of the inspiration for that element of Kai’s story came from a client I worked with who had a sibling who was deeply troubled and caused much suffering for themself and my client. She tried her best to take care of them, to keep them safe and well, but that was out of the realm of what an adolescent person could do. We worked together to process the confusing combination of emotions she experienced about her sibling: worry about them, fear for herself, anger at them, guilt and shame that she couldn’t do more. We also worked on how she could trust people and move past her anger and guilt to grow healthy relationships. A lot of the work I did with her is reflected in Kai’s journey.

Kai’s father is an alcoholic who does not consistently show up for his kids, and along with Josh’s abusive experiences with his own alcoholic father, this leads to an enmeshed love story between the two of them that I have seen play out many times in my work with individuals and couples. Details vary, but the themes of codependency and shame, sacrificing core pieces of self for other, the resentment that comes from a lack of boundaries, are all things that clients talk with me about on a daily basis and have informed Kai and Josh’s complicated relationship.

Kai’s mother, on the other hand, is a positive guiding force in her life. She is stable and strong and wise. She is not perfect, but she is good enough. I am often amazed by clients who overcome horribly difficult experiences, wondering why some people get stuck in those hardships and others rise above them.

One thing that I have found to be true is that people with consistent, loving primary caregivers are more likely to be resilient.

They are more likely to recover faster when terrible things happen to them. They find it easier to trust in the world and have hope that things will eventually get better. I intentionally gave Kai a good enough mother so that she would have the inner resources to overcome the things I was going to throw at her.

Another protective factor that I observe in clients and gave to Kai was a circle of good friends. The women who know, understand and support Kai enable her to make hard choices and not get lost in damaging patterns for too long. I’ve worked with clients who are lonely and don’t have reliable friends, and they have a much harder time overcoming depression and trauma and tend to stay stuck.

Humans aren’t meant to struggle alone. We thrive in community, and those without community have difficulty thriving.

I always intended for Kai to thrive, so I surrounded her with a community of fierce females.

People often ask me how I can do this job, with all the pain and struggle that I vicariously experience. They miss the point. To me, the most profound part of my job is seeing people heal. For all their struggles, people overcome. I am constantly inspired by my clients’ courage, their ability to hold onto hope, their determination and resilience. I created a story that put a lot of obstacles in Kai’s path, but I only did that because I knew she would be a character who, like my inspiring clients, would find a way to keep going.

Throughout the novel, Kai writes letters to the important people in her life. The book ends with a letter to her brother Kade:

Josh is a part of me. You are a part of me. Mom and Dad are part of me. But I am also whole all by myself. That’s why I’m sitting here alone, feeling you and Josh and all our history, but not feeling lonely. I’m feeling myself.

That’s all I know, and it is enough.

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You may also enjoy reading The Beauty of Vulnerability: How Being Vulnerable Can Improve Relationships, by Laura Bishop.