The Sacred Art of Breaking Open: A Recovering Good Girl's Guide to Revolutionary Resilience
What if everything you've been taught about resilience is designed to keep you compliant?
I dropped this question in this week's podcast episode, "The Bounce-Back Factor," (listen HERE). Women are waking up to the reality that traditional resilience advice… the "bounce back," "push through," "be grateful" messaging are all actually good girl conditioning in disguise.
But there's more to this story than what I could cover in podcast episode. Today, I want to dive deeper into what I call Revolutionary Resilience. This is the kind that doesn't just help you survive your storms, but transforms you into the dangerous woman you were always meant to be.
The Resilience Industrial Complex
Let's talk about something I didn't have time to unpack in the podcast but deserves space and open conversation: how the entire resilience industry has been weaponized against women's authentic power.
Walk into any bookstore, scroll through any wellness Instagram account, or attend any personal development seminar, and you'll be bombarded with resilience advice that sounds empowering but feels... wrong. "Bounce back faster!" "Turn your pain into purpose!" "Everything happens for a reason!" "Just think positive!"
Here's what they're really saying: Get back to being useful to the system as quickly as possible. Don't let your breaking slow down your productivity. Don't make anyone uncomfortable with your transformation.
This isn't resilience. This is compliance training.
Real resilience – Revolutionary Resilience – asks different questions:
What if this breaking is necessary for your becoming?
What if your rage is the most intelligent response to an insane situation?
What if healing doesn't mean returning to who you were before?
What if your "dysfunction" is actually your soul refusing to participate in systems that harm you?
The difference isn't subtle. Traditional resilience keeps you functional within broken systems. Revolutionary Resilience helps you exit those systems entirely.
The Nervous System Truth They Don't Want You to Know
Here's something for you to chew on: your nervous system is not broken when it refuses to calm down in toxic environments.
The wellness industry loves to sell you nervous system regulation techniques – breathwork, meditation, yoga, supplements. And while these tools have value, they're often prescribed with an underlying assumption: you're the problem that needs fixing.
But what if your activated nervous system is actually brilliant intelligence in action?
What if your anxiety in that corporate job isn't a disorder but your body saying, "This environment is hostile to your authentic self"?
What if your insomnia during that toxic relationship isn't pathology but your system refusing to be vulnerable in an unsafe space?
What if your "overreaction" to boundary violations isn't emotional dysregulation but your soul finally saying, "Enough"?
Revolutionary Resilience honors your nervous system as a wise ally, not an enemy to be conquered. It asks: What is my body trying to tell me about this situation? What boundaries is my nervous system demanding? What exits is my system preparing me for?
This shifts everything. Instead of trying to calm yourself down so you can tolerate the intolerable, you start listening to your system's wisdom about what needs to change.
The Mythology of Individual Resilience
The biggest lie embedded in traditional resilience advice? That resilience is an individual sport.
"Build your resilience muscle!" "Develop your coping strategies!" "Strengthen your mental toughness!"
This hyper-individualistic approach serves systems of oppression perfectly. If your struggles are just a matter of personal resilience deficits, then the systems causing those struggles never have to change.
But Revolutionary Resilience recognizes that some problems aren't yours to solve through personal growth.
If you're exhausted from being the only woman on your team fighting for basic respect, that's not a resilience problem. That's a systemic problem.
If you're depleted from carrying all the emotional labor in your family, that's not about your capacity. That's about inequitable distribution of care work.
If you're overwhelmed by the impossible standards placed on mothers, that's not about your time management. That's about a culture that demands female sacrifice.
Revolutionary Resilience includes collective action, boundary setting, and system exiting as valid responses to unsustainable situations. Sometimes the most resilient thing you can do is refuse to adapt to what's harming you.
The Sacred Season of Falling Apart
In the podcast, I mentioned that midlife storms strip away what was never really yours. But I want to expand on something crucial: the sacred necessity of falling apart.
Our culture has pathologized falling apart. We rush to "fix" women who are breaking, to get them back to functioning, to help them cope better. We medicate the symptoms, provide coping strategies, and celebrate quick recoveries.
But what if falling apart isn't the problem? What if it's the solution?
What if some things in your life are meant to fall apart so you can stop holding them together?
What if your marriage falling apart is your soul's way of saying, "This relationship requires you to be half of who you are"?
What if your career falling apart is life's way of saying, "This role was never meant for someone of your depth and power"?
What if your old identity falling apart is the universe's way of saying, "You've outgrown this version of yourself"?
Revolutionary Resilience includes sacred falling apart as part of the process, not something to avoid. It honors the composting that must happen before new growth. It trusts that sometimes destruction is the most loving thing life can do for you.
The Rage-Resilience Connection
I talked about rage as sacred information in the podcast, but there's a deeper layer here that connects directly to resilience: your capacity to feel and express healthy anger directly correlates to your resilience capacity.
Good girls are taught that anger is unspiritual, unattractive, unproductive. We're conditioned to bypass our rage with gratitude, understanding, and forgiveness. We're told that holding onto anger hurts us more than it hurts anyone else.
But here's what isn’t being said: anger is your boundary enforcement mechanism. It's your psychic immune system. It's what helps you identify threats to your authentic self and mobilize energy to address them.
When you suppress your anger, you suppress your resilience. When you spiritual bypass your rage, you undermine your capacity to navigate future challenges.
Revolutionary Resilience requires rage literacy:
Learning to feel anger without being consumed by it
Understanding the information your anger carries
Expressing anger in ways that create change rather than just venting
Using anger as fuel for necessary exits and transformations
Your rage isn't something to heal from. It's something to learn from, honor, and channel into revolutionary action.
The Somatic Wisdom of Breaking Patterns
Traditional resilience focuses on mental strategies – reframing thoughts, changing perspectives, building positive habits. But Revolutionary Resilience recognizes that transformation happens in the body first.
Your conditioning lives in your nervous system. Your trauma is stored in your tissues. Your patterns are encoded in your posture, your breathing, your movement.
You can think your way to new insights all day long, but if your body is still operating from old programming, lasting change won't happen.
This is why Revolutionary Resilience includes somatic practices:
Learning to feel your feelings in your body
Releasing stored trauma and conditioning from your tissues
Rewiring your nervous system for new patterns
Trusting your body's wisdom about what's safe and what's not
When I was building my business while grieving my parents (as I shared in the podcast), it wasn't just my mind that had to adapt. My entire nervous system had to learn that it was safe to be visible, safe to take up space, safe to have needs and express them.
That transformation happened through my body, not just my thoughts.
Revolutionary Resilience in Action
So what does Revolutionary Resilience actually look like in practice? How do you embody this in your daily life?
Revolutionary Resilience means:
Questioning the premise. Instead of asking "How can I be more resilient in this situation?" ask "Should I be trying to be resilient in this situation, or should I be trying to exit it?"
Honoring your full emotional spectrum. Your sadness, rage, fear, and joy all carry important information. Revolutionary Resilience doesn't rush to positive thinking – it honors the full journey.
Trusting your body's wisdom. If your nervous system is activated, there's a reason. If your energy is depleted, there's a message. If your boundaries are screaming, there's important information.
Building collective resilience. Connecting with other women who are also exiting systems of compliance. Creating community around authentic living. Supporting each other's dangerous choices.
Practicing sacred exits. Sometimes the most resilient thing you can do is leave. Revolutionary Resilience gives you permission to exit jobs, relationships, roles, and identities that require you to abandon yourself.
Using your story as medicine. Not rushing to "heal" from your experiences, but allowing them to transform you. Sharing your story to give other women permission for their own transformations.
Your Revolutionary Resilience Practice
If you listened to this week's podcast episode, you know I gave you homework to explore what your current storm is teaching you about who you're meant to become. But I want to add a somatic element to that practice:
This week, I invite you to:
Notice where you feel resilience in your body. When you think about a time you weathered a storm, where do you feel that strength? Your core? Your spine? Your heart? Start to embody resilience, not just think about it.
Check in with your anger. What is your rage trying to tell you about what needs to change? Don't rush to forgive or understand – just listen to the information your anger carries.
Question your compliance. Where are you trying to be resilient in situations that actually require you to exit? Where are you adapting to what's harming you instead of changing what's harming you?
Connect with other dangerous women. Revolutionary Resilience isn't a solo journey. Who in your life supports your authentic transformation? Who celebrates your boundary setting? Who honors your rage as sacred information?
The Revolution Will Be Resilient
As I said in the podcast, you're not building resilience to bounce back to who you were before. You're building resilience to become who you've always been underneath all the conditioning.
The world needs your Revolutionary Resilience. It needs women who can weather storms while transforming through them. It needs women who refuse to adapt to what harms them. It needs women who use their breaking open as breaking through.
Every time you choose Revolutionary Resilience over compliance resilience, you make it easier for the next woman to do the same. Every time you honor your rage as sacred information, you give another woman permission to trust her anger. Every time you exit what never served you, you light a path for someone else's sacred exit.
This is how we change the world – not by bouncing back to broken systems, but by transforming through our breaking into the dangerous, sacred, revolutionary women we were always meant to be.
Your storms aren't punishments. They're initiations. Your breaking isn't failure. It's becoming. Your resilience isn't about survival. It's about revolution.
Welcome to your Revolutionary Resilience, recovering good girl. The world will never be the same.
This content is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. If you're experiencing concerning symptoms, please consult with a qualified mental health professional.
