The AMAZING Melody Moezzi

Reframing Setbacks and Finding Strength in Tragedy

By Melody Moezzi

Last Updated: 28 Jul 2023

Every adversity has something to teach us if we’re willing to learn from it — not just as individuals, but also as educators and advocates.

I don’t recommend depression, mania, or psychosis. Nor do I recommend war, displacement, or global pandemics. Naturally, were I given the option of any of the above, I’d promptly choose none and be on my way. But misfortune never gives us a choice — it just strikes. And while we can’t undo setbacks any more than we can undo the sunset, we can avoid being undone by them.

There are few things about which I can speak with this much authority, but catastrophe is one. My first encounter with it came in utero, when my mom fled a revolution, hoping for a better life halfway around the world. By the time I was a toddler, I’d lived on three different continents, thanks to varied political realities beyond my control or comprehension. Twenty years later, a pancreatic tumor nearly took me out. Ten years after that, bipolar disorder tried (and failed) to do the same.

In short, I’m an accidental expert when it comes to surviving adversity and thriving anyway. So much so that I’ve developed an intentional strategy for it. Since I’m a sucker for acronyms, I’m calling it the FREE method.

Here’s how it works:

1. Feel

First, I let myself feel however I need to feel about whatever new calamity life has thrown at me, to grieve however I need to grieve. More than anything, this first step is about simply giving myself permission to fully feel whatever emotions are rising up within me, as opposed to following my natural inclination to judge or run away from them. Looking back on my bipolar diagnosis after an acute manic episode and a psychotic break, I allowed myself a year to feel however I needed to about it. That year was neither lost nor incidental to my recovery — it was central to it.

2. Reframe

Next, I step back and evaluate the situation, remembering that all of my greatest opportunities for growth came disguised as disasters — and that the wounds they’ve left behind haven’t merely failed to make me weaker, but that they have, in fact, made me stronger. This is how I was able to accept my bipolar diagnosis as soon as the antipsychotics kicked in — because I had the experience of my pancreatic tumor to draw from.

At first, that tumor felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but ultimately it forced me to appreciate life in ways that nothing else ever has. It led me to visit places I’d always wanted to go, from Montana to Mount Etna. It led me to tell people I loved them, which may seem simple but was actually huge for a smartass like me. And it led me to write my first book, knowing I might never live to see it published. Were it not for the “tragedy” of that tumor and the bipolar diagnosis that eventually followed, none of this would have been possible. In short, these bouts with serious illness have taught me how to live.

3. Educate

Recognizing my past setbacks as lessons has freed me from making the same mistakes twice — and what’s more, it has made me uniquely qualified to help others avoid making those same mistakes in the first place. Every adversity has something to teach us if we’re willing to learn from it — not just as individuals, but also as educators and advocates. But we need not endure every adversity to learn its lessons, which is why I write this column, hoping you’ll learn from mine.

4. Evolve

Once you’ve learned the lessons your personal catastrophes were meant to teach you, you can use that education to build back your life — not in the same way it was structured before, but better. Illness and disability have a miraculous knack for clarifying our priorities, liberating us to build a life that truly reflects them.

Today, more than a decade since my bipolar diagnosis, I’ve built a life that looks nothing like the one I ever expected for myself, but it’s exactly the one I want. And it’s my tragedies, not my triumphs, that got me here. While success may make us comfortable, it’s failure that makes us grow, that shakes us out of our complacency and builds our resiliency, and that, ultimately, invites us to pursue new and greater possibilities.

Printed as “Flight of Ideas: Reframing Setbacks,” Winter 2021

About the author

Melody Moezzi

Melody Moezzi, an award-winning author and visiting associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington, is also an activist, attorney, and keynote speaker. Her most recent book, The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, joins her earlier works: the critically acclaimed Haldol and Hyacinths and War on Error, which earned her a Georgia Author of the Year Award and a Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Honorable Mention. In addition to her Flight of Ideas column for bp Magazine, Moezzi’s writing has appeared in many outlets, including Ms. magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, the Guardian, HuffPost, Al Arabiya, and the Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. She has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including CNN, BBC, NPR, PBS, PRI, and more. Moezzi is a graduate of Wesleyan University, the Emory University School of Law, and the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. She divides her time between Cambridge, MA, and Wilmington, NC, with her husband, Matthew, and their ungrateful cats, Keshmesh and Nazanin. For more information, please visit melodymoezzi.com and follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.