‘Resilience Shmesilience’

Whether or not resilience is truly achievable, we can glean wisdom and gratitude from adversity and traumas

By Loretta Brady

OK, admittedly it’s not the most approachable, or pronounceable, title for an opinion piece on resilience. We are, however, heading into our third cycle ofCovid-19, with its now recognizable ebbsand flows of increased community transmissionand variant emergence. When Ibegan putting thought to page in an effortto offer NHBR readers some context andencouragement, it turns out “ResilienceShmesilience” was the most PG-friendlytitle I could muster.

I’m exhausted from being resilient, and I think most of us feel the same.

Over 6 million dead globally, with a million of those deaths here in the U.S., the developed and inclusive country with world-leading scientists and distributed public health system that set the standard for the world bearing the largest proportion of loss from a now nearly preventable illness. Right here in New Hampshire alone, with 2,408 deaths — just under 600 fewer than was lost in the 9/11 attacks — and now a call from every corner of political leadership signaling a return to normal, when by all evidence there is no return to what was for so many families and organizations.

It’s hard to be a cheerleader for resilience — a term that suggests an ability to weather adversity with a bouncy return to baseline — in the face of such loss and contrast. Yet that is the call to arms we are collectively receiving. It is a reality more than many of us are experiencing in significant ways, and it is a desire that permeates many intervention and mitigation efforts unfolding in response to the social, economic and community loss that we have collectively been experiencing since March 2020.

Is it a worthwhile or achievable goal for us now? I am not so sure, but let me explain.

My lab focuses on community resilience and social equity. In our work, we develop tools to support workforces that confront adversity, and we support organizations trying to do their best by the people they employ and serve in the face of social inequity. I am all about resilience in many ways.

Yet this moment of reflection brings me a pause in my cheerleading of resilience as a strategy or desired outcome.

Resilience in the face of ongoing adversity or trauma is not possible. Our nervous systems and social structures wear away in the face of pouring out without renewal and repair. There are some losses we simply must bear and move through — true for individuals grieving the loss of a loved one or a personal dream, and true for communities changed by hardship.

It may seem, then, an impossible task to discuss bouncing back from an ongoing

pandemic while acknowledging some of us will stay low from our experience, while others of us may indeed feel energized by the life changes that have eventually arisen from the ashes of the once normal.

I don’t think it’s impossible for resilience to be attained, but I think it falls short of the true reality of our historical moment and limits the potential of what is ahead.

WE ARE ALL CONNECTED

There is a concept in trauma recovery known as “post-traumatic growth.” It is a phenomenon that can happen after adversity, when individual perspective, belief in oneself and others, and hopefulness can be experienced as greater than the sense of these things we had prior to adversity.

This isn’t to say we want to experience trauma, rather it’s a reality that the meaning we make of our experiences can deepen our abilities to process and endure in our day-today lives. We may grieve and experience pain at reminders of our trauma, but we also have wisdom and gratitude alongside these other emotional realities.

Collectively, in our companies and in our homes, this moment is a chance to move ahead into the world we now have while also acknowledging and working sincerely with the knowledge of what we now know about ourselves and our communities.

What might this look like? Every employee is essential, every worker is a human first and deserves the dignity of attending to their actual lives and families and not only to a bottom line.

Every desire doesn’t need to be filled, and indeed as we face a global crisis that will mean even sharper increases in costs of commodities and supply chain interruptions, this is a valuable lesson indeed.

We are all connected, and those connections are the things that bring us forward when we respect them for their real function and opportunity.

When we can operate with these lessons at the forefront while acknowledging our needs and serving the needs of others as graciously as we can in a given moment, we

are on the path to not only being resilient but to flourishing.

A SENSE OF PERMISSION

It may be hard to recognize wreckage and see beauty, but unless and until we honor the wreck, we won’t be able to realize the growth we have all experienced these past two years or to prepare for the growth despite trauma we face in hardships surely ahead of us yet.

And after a working lifetime of “do more with less,” it’s time for organizations to take their own adage to heart: expect less and give more control, flexibility and compensation to the humans holding up the sky for your systems. Their flourishing is yours, and we won’t weather the storms ahead unless we take this reality as seriously as we took lockdown … well, perhaps more seriously than that after all.

We can take our lessons and our losses, however life-altering they have been, and move ahead with a sense of permission to live as fully as we can and to be forgiving of ourselves and others when that fullness misses our expectations or our needs.

In these moments, what resilience means to me looks a lot like accountability, reflection, making meaning and making commitments to living well, and everything we can do that empowers that wellness is worth doing for ourselves, our families and our organizations.

Loretta L.C. Brady is a professor of psychology at Saint Anselm College and directs the Community Resilience and Social Equity Lab. She also coordinates the annual resilience and equity conference, “Repair & Renew,” which is accepting sponsors and presentation submissions and will take place virtually, June 16-18. Her creative nonfiction book, “Technology Touchpoints: Parenting in the Digital Dystopia,” will be released in November 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield.