My Resilience

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and his dad did not have the best relationship in the beginning, but at the end of their very long journey they were inseparable. In the book Boy In the Boat by Daniel James Brown Joe did not really have a family until he made the rowing team, and until he met Joyce who would later become his wife and they would start a family. Human resilience is affected by family in both of these books.

Resilience, when asked to define and explain the act of being resilient, can be a hard thing to describe. It is something everyone must be at one point in their lives, and what some people must be every day. There are different levels to it, depending on what the person is going through at the time. However, resilience is commonly described as just staying strong in a tough situation or time in a person’s life. When something goes wrong, or something bad happens, the person affected doesn’t let it break them. They stand strong against whatever is being thrown at them, but they bend when they need to. Someone who is resilient is flexible, making sure they don’t crack under pressure. As Robert Jordan said in The Fires of Heaven, “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”

People have learned to be resilient in order to overcome serious hardships. A person’s resilience can be seen through how they handle bad experiences; to be resilient in the face of adversity. People who never give up and always fight back even when it gets hard are resilient. Some believe that resilience is a trait that can be learned.

Resilience is about how an individual deals, resists, recovers and learns from adversity’s in life. If a child is resilient they are less likely to be damaged as a result of negative experiences and are more likely to learn from and move on. In order for a child to be resilient they need to believe in themselves and have others they can rely on in their lives.

According to the author McCubbin in Karen Seccombe’s article “‘Beating the Odds’ Versus ‘Changing the Odds’: Poverty, Resilience, and Family Policy” he says that “It can be defined as the capacity to rebound from adversity, misfortune, trauma, or other transitional crises strengthened and more resourceful” (385). McCubbins point is that resiliency is to bounce back from any “crises” or “misfortune” in a person’s life. Being resilient is to keep moving forward from any bad events. For example some factor work with a person’s resiliency such as a good parental bond, good community, and a role model.

Resilience is about being independent, standing on your own two feet or taking back the power.

Resilience is the ability to overcome struggles. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel is put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust. During his time there, Elie would not have been able to be so resilient without his father by his side. In Boys in The Boat, Joe Rantz would also have struggled to overcome his struggles without his dad. However, without Joe’s father treating him so badly throughout his childhood Joe might not have been so motivated to prove to his father that he was strong. In both books, Joe and Elie both demonstrate resilience by using their family to overcome their struggles.

Resilience is the power or the ability to return to the original form. “Resilience is born by grounding yourself in your own loveliness, hitting notes you thought were way out of your range” (94). Father Gregory Boyle says this because he knows that resilience is needed in order to change. Resilience is important because we can become better people by doing things, we thought we couldn’t do. In the book, Tattoos on the Heart, The Power of Boundless Compassion, Boyle claims resilience is essential in our lives because it is the key to do better.

There are varieties of definitions in regards with resilience based on different perspectives (Arrington et al., 2000). For instance, from a developmental perspective, resilience can be defined as positive and successful outcomes despite challenging situations (Masten, 2007; Windle, 2010). Resilience can also be defined as recovery to normal functioning from adversity or coping well under currently risk conditions (Masten, 2007; Windle, 2010). However, not every language has the word “resilience”. For example, a phrase, “the ability to cope with adversity” (Ungar et al.,

Resilience is the ability to adapt well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats and sources of stress. In terms of children, it is how well a child copes with events that happen in their lives such as starting or changing schools, illness or death of a close relative. These events cannot be prevented but can be overcome. Being resilient does not mean that children won't experience difficulty or distress; however child practitioners can help children to manage stress and feelings of anxiety and uncertainty and overcome difficulties.

Resilience, fundamentally, is the ability to bounce back from hardship and the phenomenon of overcoming stress or adversity, for example: personal crises, poverty, mental illness and trauma (Occupational Health & Wellbeing, 2012). This skill can help individuals overcome the most difficult of situations (Occupational Health & Wellbeing, 2012). Resilience theorists generally agree that the presence of protective factors can reduce the effects of exposure to adversity. The more protective factors (or “assets”) available, the more resilient a person will be. Protective factors are conditions or attributes that help people deal more effectively with stressful events and eliminate risk. On the contrary, risk factors are attributes or characteristics

Resilience is a term that is often applied to those who have faced hardship and viewed the experience in a positive light as an opportunity to grow and change for the better (Wagnild & Collins, 2009). The definition however seems to vary from place to place. Ungar et al. (2008) stated “definitions of resilience are ambiguous when viewed across cultures" (p.174) which is why the understanding of resilience may be difficult to capture (as cited in Windle, Bennett & Noyes, 2011). Although the literature agrees on several common themes about resilience there are many varying opinions on how to define the concept or the attributing factors. Earvolino-Ramirez (2007) and

Research in this field has originated in two fields of traumatology (looking at adults) and developmental psychology (looking at children and youth). Early researches with adults mainly focused on identifying what led some individuals to avoid traumatic stress whereas in developmental psychology, researchers aimed to identify personal qualities, as self-esteem, differentiating children who had adapted positively to socioeconomic nuisance, abuse or neglect and tragic life events, from children showing comparatively poorer outcomes (Luthar, Cicchetti and Becker, 2000). However, the root of research in resilience shows some limitations to the early approaches.

Resilience in an individual refers to successful adaptation, despite the risk and adversity. The manner in which Matson 2004 defines resilience is very clear to me, as I can relate and reflect this to one particular girl that resided in the care centre I worked. Throughout the young girl's childhood, she developed an insecure and ambivalent attachment to both her parents, as a result of their hectic lifestyle of substance misuse. At a young age her father died from the HIV viruses, which lead her mother in becoming depressed and profoundly dependant on drugs. Due to the mother's dependency, she was unable to respond accordingly to the girls needs, given very mixed and inconsistent responses. At the age of 10, due to extreme neglect, the young girl was removed from her mothers care and entered the care setting. Over the years the young girl had experienced several placement breakdowns, and at 13 was admitted to a residential centre. During this time she felt both a

First of all, I would like to define what resilience is. Major scholars believe it is the process to recover from trauma, or the ability to respond to adversity. According to Sergeant and Laws-Chapman (2012), resilience refers to “the ability to adapt to adverse conditions while maintaining a sense of purpose, balance, and positive mental and