The theme for this semester’s OzTalk series revolves around resiliency toward struggles and conflicts in life.

Scales Hall Residence Hall Director Anneke Darling shared her experience with this topic Tuesday, Oct. 9 in the residence hall main lounge, which she referred to as a living room setting, with hot chocolate and tea in mugs, light music filling the silence and paint supplies for attendees to use during the talk.

“My life is definitely a journey, and I can’t say I’ve arrived at any destination yet in regards to this particular topic,” Darling said.

Darling shared some mistakes she has made in life, including using fabric softener as laundry detergent for an entire semester or bombing a presentation in front of an executive director, and how she has recovered from her failures.

“A lot of those things maybe didn’t happen to me specifically, in the sense that the direct impact was either against me or not my experience, but were definitely things that shaped the way that I view the world and shaped who I am today,” Darling said.

Born and raised in a small town in Michigan, Darling said she had been shaped by the responsibility of taking care of others, as her family took in seriously ill family members until they passed away from the time she was 10 years old to when she was 16, and the impact it had on her family.

Darling said many of her fond memories growing up were of her relationship with Hospice care workers, for whom she said she has a great respect to this day. Darling said she can see the circumstances as a gift in disguise because it taught her about mortality and the importance of living for the present, rather than the future.

Attendee Nicky Radford said that, as a current undergraduate student who is consistently stressed, he resonated with Darling’s experience living much of her undergrad years looking to the future rather than living for the future. He said he learned that is best to try and live in the present because it gives one a better mentality.

“Even through hardship and even through struggles as intense as hers, you can overcome it,” Radford said. “It just requires that resilience, hope and belief that even when things are rough, it will get better.”

Starting at the age of 12, Darling said she tried to predict the needs of her loved ones, do everything she could to accommodate those needs and be the dependable child. Later in life, as an escape, she said she would often sneak into her church to play the grand piano, for which she had been receiving lessons starting at 6 years old.

“I had a key and I would let myself in, and they had a beautiful grand piano that nobody seemed to mind that I played. I’m sure they knew I was doing it, but nobody stopped me,” Darling said. “I would play for hours and hours and just try and work through the emotions and the things I was experiencing and the things I was seeing.”

She began painting as another creative outlet for her emotions, which she practiced while speaking to the audience in the lounge. She also used traveling and community service to put things in her life in perspective. She said journaling and writing helps her to take time to deconstruct her thoughts and reframe the situation in a different light. While Darling said she still struggles with maintaining hope for things to be able to change, she said she best deals situations by taking it as it is.

“I wish I could say a lot of those things have been resolved… I wish I could tie a little bow on that box of stories and make it prettier than what it is, but it’s just not at that point right now,” Darling said. “Life is messy; family, I think, is messier, and there’s a lot of difficulty there.”

Darling said the times where she has best handled situations has been when she took time to dwell in her community and establish a support system, including a connection she created with her own hall director during her undergraduate, whom she claimed was part of the reason why she became a hall director herself.

A phrase Darling likes, “be more gentle with yourself,” was said to her once by Oneida Hall Assistant Hall Director Kelly Kearns, and she said she wants to try and implement it more in her life because it is important to not bear all of the weight of stress.

Johnson Hall Assistant Hall Director Sarah Pasquarelli said she enjoyed attending the talk because Darling is her friend and coworker and the topic of resiliency resonated with her.

“I would like to be able to use it to work with students better in my hall,” Darling said. “[My biggest take-away] is to be more vulnerable because it can have an impact on anyone.”

Photo by Stephen Novak | The Oswegonian