It's not all about brushing it off and bouncing back - in order to be a decent human being you have to feel it all, too.

I keep sitting here looking blankly at the screen. There is this thing that I do, that I think a lot of us do, when something happens. If you're minded to pursue growth, to find the learning, we lean in to it far too quickly.

I sometimes feel like I'm surrounded by people who are intent on sharing the lesson from the shit, sharing the pearl from the grit in the shell, but doing that before it's all fully formed.

Did you know it takes years for a pearl to be formed in an oyster shell? Now I'm not saying it takes years, but it does take some time, some introspection, some time to step back and get perspective, before you can discover the true meaning.

I feel like we are all so impatient to be... there. Wherever there is, that we don't take the time to do the work to get there.

Anyway, that wasn't exactly what I was talking about, or thinking. But I guess I kind of was. I'm a little muddled tonight and that's ok too. It doesn't always have to be perfect, or even very often. It just needs to be progress.

I'm wary of anyone who bounces back immediately after a set back because, from experience, it's usually fairly brittle and hollow.

Whilst I hate the rubber ball analogy of resilience, I think the pearl formation is pretty perfect as an analogy.

It takes time, and layers and grows solidly. It expands over time. It's a thing of beauty in an of itself.

Tonight I'm thinking about all the times I tried to make myself bounce back, be whole. The night I found out my father had died, I told two people. I also performed an improvised comedy routine in front of a room full of student-barristers, barristers, QC's and judges. I don't remember much of it because I drank several bottles of red wine to numb the pain of everything I was feeling. That night is on my mind tonight.

10 years later when my mum died, I went back to work far too quickly because I didn't know what else to do. 3 weeks and I was back at my desk. It was too soon and I was hollow, brittle and starting to crack.

Yes, we are impatient. Yes we want to move beyond the immediate pain we are in, whether it's grief and loss or shock or exhaustion or just the repetitive strain of our daily lives.

But please, remember that there is a difference between faking it til you make and real and true growth. In order to discover that pearl in the shell you have to give it time, allow the answers to come to you, rather than force an outcome or a reason or a lesson.

It takes time to grow something real and true.

Even if that means sitting in the uncomfortable or painful place.

You're not a rubber ball.

Stop trying to behave like one.