We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jolie Meshbesher a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jolie, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Creativity keeps me alive.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a mother, and a survivor of both domestic violence, and the “family court” system. I recently attended an activist meeting for family court reform, and found out that my children and I were, in fact, gaslit on a large scale by the very system we trusted to protect us. We are not alone.
I grew up always in the arts, constantly jumping from one modality to another, but mostly in the performing arts. My relationship with ballet has been complicated and long. Once I found aerial acrobatics, it was as if the multiple facets came together, and finally made sense. My mother was very abusive and oppressive my entire life, and was shockingly part of the “family court” debacle. Aerial gave me a voice, grounding, a community, work, and a way to process the complicated
emotions that come alongside trauma. Aerial has saved me every step of the way so much that I call it “the Air Force.” It helped me overcome the helplessness that systemic and familial oppression can bring.
I see myself as an activist working through the arts. When I conceive of an act, the intention is to create a hope filled lifeline to anyone experiencing similar situations or emotions, just as creating them is one for me. I just started a website and blog, which will have more information about various topics including aerial, justice, and general life. After all, aerial saved my life.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1) Reading- My dad used to say, “you can learn anything through a book.” I almost comically get books on any topic or situation I find myself in, and take inspiration from surprising places.
2) Divergent thinking- helped me connect a lot of dots, make realizations and approach challenges in unique ways. When we encountered scarcity and were struggling for survival on welfare etc, it helped us stay positive, come up with creative solutions, and generally make things work with a sense of humor.
3) Hutzpah- Or is it stubbornness? There’s something in me that refuses to give up. In fact, in the face of adversity, I tend to fortify. I call it Antifragile.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Miracle in the Andes- Nando Parrado/ I Had to Survive- Roberto Canessa
A couple of years ago, I heard the story about Uruguayan Flight 571 on the podcast “You’re Wrong About,” while going through the horrors of family court. Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa bravely scaled a 16,000 foot mountain while starving, and it seemed as if everything was working against them. The mountain was inadvertently playing mind games with them, and the court system/abusers were deliberately playing mind games with us. This December, the children alerted me to the fact that
“Society of the Snow,” came out, which whimsically gave me the strength to endure much of the winter. It was quite synchronistic.
I knew I wanted to do something with the story using aerial, but was not sure how. Last August, the dream of making the story into a cirque-opera emerged. It is in its infancy, but I am determined to bring the story to anyone who might need it, and maybe heal ourselves in the process.
“Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear.” – Nando Parrado, Miracle in the Andes.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kineticbuddha.com
- Instagram: kineticbuddha
- Facebook: Jolie Melana Meshbesher
- Twitter: kineticbuddha
Image Credits
Rainbow Connection- Steve Bozeman Star Trek- Brad Demay
