What the Unbreakable People Know About Themselves
You didn't survive because you were tough enough. You survived because something in you was already whole.
Hey friend - I’ve been thinking about resilience lately. Not the word — the word gets used so casually it’s almost lost its meaning. I mean the actual lived experience of going through something that should have broken you, and discovering that it didn’t.
It takes courage not to settle for a small life.
In February of this year, John and I flew to Loreto, Baja California, Mexico. You might be surprised to know that this was the third time we’ve returned since 2017 — the year we were there on vacation and, one hour after whale watching, our van was hit on a two-lane desert highway and I nearly died. For two decades, except for six years after the accident, we have returned to Loreto to visit our friends and spend time in nature. The Sea of Cortez, the mountains, the unhurried pace of a small Mexican town on the water.
What gives me the courage to return to the place where I almost died?
I have a knowing. A bone-deep certainty built from evidence — the accumulated proof of my own survival — that if I were ever to face something devastating again, I could rely on what I’ve already been through. Not because I’m fearless. Because I’ve done hard things before, and I know what I’m made of.
Let me tell you what I mean by that.
Twenty-one years ago, my younger brother was murdered. His case remains unsolved in Knoxville, Tennessee. I had to find a way to carry that grief without letting it become the whole story of my life.
Fourteen years ago, my son faced a medical crisis that required interventions that saved his life. If you’ve ever sat in a hospital waiting room not knowing if your child will make it through the night, you know a particular quality of helplessness that is unlike anything else. I sat in that room. I made it through that wait. And so did he.
Nine years ago, I was in a near-fatal car wreck in Baja, Mexico. A medical evacuation. Six surgeries — two in Mexico, three at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. A six-week hospital stay. Learning to walk twice. A near-death experience in the surgery suite that changed everything about how I understand suffering, love, and what I’m here to do.
When I look back at all of it, here’s what I notice:
I didn’t just survive those things. Something in me grew because of them. Not despite the suffering — through it.
The pain became a teacher. The challenges became a doorway.
I want to be careful about how I say this, because I’m not suggesting I’m special nor can anyone do this.
I do not let my ego get away with things like that — ha. I have sat with too many women who have been through as much or more, and I think it’s important that we never compare our traumas. Each of us carries what we carry. It hurts and we suffer.
What I’m saying is that something made the difference between being destroyed by these experiences and being transformed by them. I’ve been trying to understand what that something is, because if I can name it, maybe you can find it in yourself too.
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Looking honestly at my own life, I can see two things that have sustained me through every hard season, and deepened with each one rather than diminishing.
The first is a strong spiritual practice and a belief in my Higher Power.
Not a tidy, comfortable religion — a living, breathing relationship with something larger than myself.
A willingness to say, in the ambulance, in the surgery suite, in the middle of my marriage falling apart and being rebuilt: I’m in your hands. I surrender this to you.
Use whatever language feels true for you — God, Universe, Higher Power, Source. The name matters less than the act of opening your hands.
I am not a counselor. I want to be clear about that. In fact, I have gone through counseling during each of these traumas, and even now I see a psychologist to help me process childhood wounds.
The work of self-realization — of forgiving myself and others, of understanding what has been running underneath my choices — feels like the job of my lifetime.
I do not write from a place of having arrived. I write from a place of being deeply in it.
The second is what I would call a rich inner life.
The willingness to go inside rather than run away by numbing out or overworking. To feel what needs to be felt. To ask what this experience is trying to teach me. To sit with the part of me that is deeper than the fear — quieter than the pain, and somehow, always, still intact.
These two things together — the Higher Power and the inner life — have not made the hard things easier. But they have made them meaningful.
And meaning, I have come to believe, is what makes the difference between trauma that destroys and trauma that transforms.
This is not resilience as toughness. This is resilience as the discovery of what was always already whole in you.
I said there is something in you that is already whole. I meant that literally.
What I’ve come to call that wholeness has a name. Carl Jung spent his career pointing toward it. Every great spiritual tradition has mapped it. Psychology has been circling it for over a century. And in the void between life and death — in the surgery suite in San Diego, when the ego fell completely away and what remained was pure love, pure peace, pure awareness — I came face to face with it.
That is what next week’s piece is about.
Not what makes people unbreakable. But what the unbreakable part actually is.
Did you resonate with this article? If so, I’d love to know what you think. Please share this on social media as it helps people find this work. Sending lots of love your way.
XO, Sherold
P.S. Mark your calendar:
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HIGH ROAD TO HEALING
Gatherings on the High Road
Our next Gathering on the High Road — April 22 🌿
The 100-Day Visualization Project.
This Gathering is for paid subscribers. Please consider joining so you can take advantage of the many Gatherings I will offer this year on Zoom.
✦ Wednesday, April 22
✦ 12:00pm PDT · 1:00pm MDT · 2:00pm CDT · 3:00pm EDT
✦ 7:00pm GMT · 8:00am Thursday NZDT
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Here’s what I want you to know before we meet:
Visualization is not wishful thinking. It is not a vision board on a wall that you walk past without feeling anything. And it is not the same as hoping something will happen and waiting for the universe to deliver it.
It is neuroscience.
Researchers have shown that when you vividly imagine doing something — truly see it, feel it, experience it in your body — your brain activates the same neural pathways as if you were actually doing it. In one landmark study, basketball players who practiced free throws only in their minds improved nearly as much as players who practiced physically. Same neural pathways. Same results.
This is what 100 days of consistent visualization can do to a brain.
It can rewire it.
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At our April 22 Gathering we’ll explore:
✦ What the science actually says about how visualization works
✦ Why most people do it wrong — and the one shift that changes everything
✦ How to begin your own 100 Day Visualization Project
✦ What you want to do, be, or have — and how to make your brain your greatest ally
I’ll share the research, tell you a story, and give you three prompts to begin your own practice. Then we’ll share with each other.
This Gathering will be recorded and sent to all paid subscribers.
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Not yet a paid subscriber? This is a beautiful moment to join us.
$50 for a full year — Gatherings several times a quarter, teachings, and a community of women doing the real work of healing and becoming.
👉 JOIN HERE: https://www.sheroldbarr.com/subscribe
I can’t wait to be in the room with you. With love,
Sherold