š”ļø The 12 Pillars, Pillar 5: Resilience
How Writers Survive Shame, Doubt, Fear, and Comparison
On the review that guts you, the gut that already knew, and why resilience was never about growing thicker skin.
Last time, I promised subscribers a lesson about the woman I became after my āgreat implosionā ā the one I said deserved its own space. This is that space. But before I hand you the story, letās talk about the thing resilience actually is, because itās almost never what weāve been told.
Resilience Isnāt a Thicker Skin
We talk about resilience like itās armor ā like the goal is to eventually stop feeling the sting of a bad review, a rejection, a comparison spiral at 11pm scrolling someone elseās launch numbers. I want to gently push back on that, because I donāt think thatās actually true, and I donāt think itās even the goal worth spending your finite energy chasing.
Iāve been doing this writing thing a long time. Iāve also survived decades of things that taught my nervous system how to keep functioning under real pressure and threat. And I still feel the sting. A hard review still lands. A comparison thought can still creep in on a tired day. Resilience didnāt remove the sting for me. It changed what I do with it once it arrives.
Thatās the whole pillar, actually. Resilience isnāt about becoming numb. Itās about becoming quick to recover ā and recovery has a shape you can actually learn.
The Two Voices Youāll Hear After Hard Feedback
Hereās something Iāve noticed, in myself and in every writer Iāve ever talked honestly with about this: after a piece of hard feedback lands, two different voices show up, almost at the same time, and they sound nearly identical at first.
Voice one is shame. It says youāre not good enough. You never should have published this. Everyone can see it now. Shame is loud, itās global, and itās almost never actually useful ā itās not trying to help you write better, itās trying to make you small enough to stop being seen at all.
Voice two is instinct. Itās quieter. It doesnāt attack your worth ā it points, calmly, at something specific. Something didnāt fit here. You already half-knew, didnāt you? Instinct isnāt cruel. Itās just honest, and it arrives at almost the same moment as shame, which is exactly why the two get tangled together and mistaken for the same voice. And also why ā many times ā instinct will get written off instead of leaned into.
The skill of resilience is learning to separate them. Shame gets thanked for showing up and then firmly shown the door. Instinct gets a chair at the table, because instinct is the only one of the two that actually has something worth telling you.
Think of the last time hard feedback landed on your work:
Can you separate what was shame ā global, cruel, unspecific ā from what might have actually been your own instinct, quietly confirming something you already suspected?
Where has comparison to another writerās path cost you more than it ever taught you?
What would it feel like to let feedback change your next project instead of demanding it invalidate the one you already finished?
š My own recent āinstinct already knewā story ā and the pressure-valve discovery that came out of it ā is below for paid subscribers. (Psst ā this is also exactly the material Iāll be teaching live in our very first Tech-with-Soul workshop on August 3rd, included free with your subscription. No pressure, just a heads up. š)
