Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Advertises
Every person used to have tussles and hard times which he or she needed to overcome. In Resilience, the ways of solving problems are shown through the author’s own experience. Before reading Resilience, I was not aware about Elizabeth Edwards. I thought of her as a woman who was having everything and who lived an ideal life. In the beginning, she was married to a person named John Edwards, the former U.S. Senator from North Caroline and presidential candidate. Elizabeth was also having a great career to be held in honor, she was a law clerk for a federal judge. Besides, after moving to Raleigh, she also worked in the Attorney General Office. Due to these facts, I thought she was one of the most fortunate and blessed women who had a great and respected life. This was the way I thought about her before reading her hard and complicated story of life from the book.
Before discussing the book, I would like to inform some facts about her early life. I consider that having the knowledge about the author helps a lot to have a clear understanding of the story. As her father was a pilot of Navy, she never had a hometown; she moved from one place to another many times because of the type of her father’s job. She used to live out of the United States; she also had to leave for Japan in her early part of life. When she was young, she had to deal with many difficulties. She had to attend many funerals where she saw the mourning of her friends as they lost their fathers who were killed in the war. In my opinion, her emotional experiences in her early life helped her to overcome the terrible pain she had during her further life.
When I began to read the first page of the book, I supposed to meet with a heroine who was pleased with her happy life being a wife and a mother. Though, the book started with depressed and dull words, like hospital, death, and never. As I was expecting a calm and very easy life story, I was quite amazed and carried away with this narrative. The first part contains the anguish for the death of Elizabeth’s father and her first son Lucius Wade. Her father had cancer from the war; he was a pilot and had fights in many wars whenever duty called.
When I had a look at the part, in which Elizabeth described her sufferings about her father’s illness, I imagined my aunt entering in a hospital. I came to a dead stop in reading and started to reminisce the minutes when I visited my aunt in a hospital. I became quite sad and could feel the sense of Elizabeth’s sufferings at that moment. Moreover, another great misfortune has befallen her. It was the death of her son. Wade, her oldest child, died at the age of sixteen. He died by accident when he lost control while driving a truck.
One more problem appeared in Elizabeth’s life: she was suffering from breast cancer. I suppose, it was the most painful moment in her life. I can just imagine how she felt at that moment. She found out the problem of breast cancer during a campaign; nevertheless, John and Elizabeth continued the campaign for the Presidency with the announcement of the return of cancer. While she was pushing ahead, she got good news that her cancer was not curable, but it could be treated. However, at the last moment she left the treatment of the cancer because it did not give any effect. While she got the inadequate news, she kept trying to motivate her family and other people going through hard times. If I were at her place, I would only try to find out the other treatments to cure my cancer. I would not be eager to support or help other people because I would surrender myself to despair.
I consider her positive thoughts and behaviors to be the most powerful strength. After the death of her son she tried to think and behave as he was still alive. She decided to have more children; Emma Claire and Jack were her children after Wade’s death. Elizabeth says she was very grateful to her family, relatives, and friends despite she was suffering because she had a great support from them. She also stopped thinking about the death because it impaired her state of health; she had a belief that it made her illness and sufferings regulate her body and mind. I can clearly observe that she always tried to make the right choice in every situation. Even having cancer, she was an activist for the women’s health and patients of cancer. Therefore, she influenced many people in positive ways due to her positive thinking. She motivated and encouraged people by telling them her own experiences and positive actions she performed in order to solve her problems. Her life was not easy, but still she lived an essential and significant life.
In my opinion, Resilience taught me many lessons that I have learned in Bio-Behavioral Health Class. I learned psychological influences on how people remain healthy and keep their body fit. In addition, Health is a complete form of physical, mental and social well-being; health is not just all about the physical statement of a person. There should be a balance between the physical, mental, and social well-being. We can also say that the mind and the body of a person work together.
In Resilience, Elizabeth explained the healthy life by taking her life as an example. She always did her best to stay in positive mood and influence good and optimistic things to other people. It gave me an opportunity to realize the power of hopefulness.
