Disasters come at the most unexpected time. There is often no notice and they usually leave the victims overwhelmed, with their lives in shreds. There is no alternative, just total ruination.
Whether it is death, divorce, illness, fires, or acts of terrorism, the agony that is cause has a common aspect. It hurts! So how do we survive so much pain?
In the beginning you are engulfed by the mind-numbing state of shock and absolute disbelief, where the real facts don't register. This is how the body helps you to survive. If the fullness of the facts could register immediately, no one would survive!
Then follows a volatile mix of anger, disbelief, guilt and a whole variety of feelings on a roller coaster ride that has your world spinning out like a runaway jet. This is the time you need you need to give yourself some small breathing space to attend to your wounds and wait for a small ray of the healing process to commence, through an unhindered expression of your grief. For even though you don't believe it now, over time you will heal.
The fact is life will continue and you will have no choice but to keep on going for where there is life there is hope. Yes, you may have lost an entire way of life, a loved one, or good friends, but you are still living. Your heart is still pumping and your body demands you take care of it.
Throughout history disasters have proven to be times of opportunity. Opportunity that forces out the community spirit, as has been revealed in the quick reaction to the horrendous bush fires that have roared across the southern part of Australia. Opportunities for the least noticed person in the area to become a hero. Opportunities for people to give a helping hand to others they don't even know. Opportunities to express a true sense of empathy with the people who are hurting. Opportunities to let others reach out to you. Comforting and aiding others is often the best and most healing route you can take, even if it is merely in the manner of presenting a comforting shoulder for someone to shed their tears on.
It is in times of disasters that you are frequently forced to face your fears, in a three-d effect. The "what ifs..?" that frighten you stupid in the small hours of the morning, when life is as its lowest ebb. The reality however, is often easier to cope with than the imagined fears were.
Disasters bring you to the reality that life is unpredictable and you are forced to deal with situations you did not anticipate. Disasters can turn you into refugees. People who must fashion a different way of life. People who know what it is to lose everything. No matter what you feel like, you simply can't lie down and die when disaster disintegrates your life.
The luxury of having a pity-party is not an option. Feeling sorry for yourself hurts no one but yourself. Disasters are the time you are forced to search deep inside yourself, to find strengths you never thought you had.
They key to surviving a disaster, is to be a realist and an optimist rolled all into one, for life-stopping occurrences alter you forever. You become a different person.
Disaster divides your life into before and after the tragedy. You will never look at even the simple things of life in the same way. Yet, the end of one thing is always the beginning of another. It has been proven time and again that human nature will rise, just as out of the ashes the phantom phoenix rises anew.
How are you supposed to endure through disaster? You simply look back and discover the lessons from the past, but more importantly you look ahead and take one small step at a time. The highest peaks on earth were conquered through one step at a time. You can do it too. You can take that next step, no matter how heartbreaking. Let the big things take care of themselves. Just survive today.