Why sometimes we need to crack to let the light in

“Can’t find a house, my business is tanking, there’s a global pandemic and I’ve got terminal cancer. But you know… worse things happen at sea. Not much worse, but worse.”

That’s my husband talking and we both find it funny. We lurk in the dark corners of black humour when things are challenging, as they are now. It gives us distance, helps to right our little ship when it starts to list.

I’ve written about my husband’s cancer before so in this blog entry, I want to focus on other peoples’ life challenges and how they get through them. How sometimes they become stronger because of them.

The idea of growth through suffering is a thousand years old. Wend your way through Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism. Take a scoot round the thinking of the Hebrews, Greeks and early Christians. Post-Traumatic Growth (as a psychological theory) has only been with us since the 1990s.

Chris Morris writes about the long-term impact of Covid and post-traumatic stress. Doctors are also acknowledging some patients are experiencing post-traumatic growth — that they’re emerging from the pandemic with a new outlook on life. Julie Highfield is an intensive care clinical psychologist: “There are some people who, no matter how difficult this has been, find themselves in a more positive frame of mind. People feel it’s…