Resilience

All of us experience setbacks, loss, and hardship at various times in our lives. It’s life! Resilience is the capacity to cope with and recover from the grief, sadness, stress, and disruption that accompanies the challenges and adversities we face. And while it’s true that some people are naturally better at bouncing back from hardship than others, research has proven that all of us have the inborn capacity for resilience. Building resilience is like building a muscle—it takes practice and it develops over time. It’s never too late to get better at developing those resilience muscles.

Being resilient doesn’t mean going through life without experiencing stress and pain. People feel grief, sadness, and a range of other emotions after adversity and loss. The road to resilience lies in working through the emotions and effects of stress and painful events. 

As the young person in your care prepares to enter college and live and work independently, they will need to call on their own resilience to help them navigate and get through inevitable challenges. You can play a major role in building their resilience “muscles.” 

In this module, you will reflect on your own capacity for resilience. You’ll discover the factors that can help build resilience and specific ways you can guide and support the young people in your care as they build their own lifelong skills for bouncing back from adversity.