Insights on Resilience #1
In her classic volume, Strengthening Family Resilience, Froma Walsh defines resilience as, “the ability to rebound from crisis and overcome life challenges.” Some of us just want to bounce back. The truth is that after a significant life crash, our old realities do not exist anymore. Therefore, we bounce forward into new realities…or crawl, as it may be.
Since resilience may be referred to as bouncing forward when normal gets upended, there is hope.
Ann Masten, in her research on resilience in children, says, “The most surprising conclusion emerging from studies of these children is the ordinariness of resilience.”
Ordinary? Did you catch that? She said the “ordinariness of resilience.”
When you or I struggle with determination through years of rebuilding after a stroke, cancer, or lingering autoimmune disease, it hardly feels ordinary. Because it has taken all of the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical energy we have.
Yet, zooming out to widen our perspective, this notion of resilience as “ordinary magic” should encourage you. This is good news. People are resilient, and so are you! “What began as a quest to understand the extraordinary has revealed the power of the ordinary. Resilience does not come from rare and special qualities, but from the everyday magic of ordinary, normative human resources in the minds, brains, and bodies of children, in their families and relationships, and in their communities,” claims Masten.
So today, embrace your own ordinary magic!
-Excerpt from Thrive Anyway
Worth Repeating
Resilience is the ability to rebound from crisis and overcome life challenges.
-Froma Walsh
