Resilience, the Ultimate Lifeline of Hope

In the dark, I stared at the phone. Please don’t ring. We left our small, helpless newborn in the neonatal ICU. He struggled to stay alive with every breath.

“The next 48 to 72 hours will be the most critical. If his lungs develop in that time, his prospects are good.”

One word held me in fear—if. Every moment the phone didn’t ring brought us closer to “his prospects are good.”

That day and the days to come I learned the power of resilience. Not just once, but over and over, as challenges, tragedy, and the mundane obstacles of life threw curveballs and tested my mettle.

“We need resilience and hope and a spirit
that can carry us through the doubt and fear.”
—Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Resilience grows from the ability to get knocked down by life and bounce back, even stronger than before. Resiliency isn’t about endurance. You build resilience. How?

What trees can teach us about resilience

Think about trees. The trunks of trees become stronger as they resist the wind and natural conditions. But a tree is more than what we see—trunk, limbs, and leaves.

Trees grow a web of roots that dig deep into the ground and spread well beyond the trunk to hold the weight of the tree. Aspen trees grow to 20 to 80 feet, but their trunks average 3 to 18 inches in diameter.

What keeps them standing through snow and wind on the mountainsides? An interconnected root system creates a shared network to support the trees.

Like those tree roots, you can build resiliency through hope. With every small act of getting back up, you create your own network. You become stronger and more resilient.

One more step

Find moments of joy along the way. Like the roots of those Aspen trees, joy knits together your resolve to keep going. No one escapes bad things. But we can choose how we respond to the unexpected and unwanted difficulties.

“Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience.”
—Brené Brown

Listen to the trees

Words of hope

“Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen, but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.”

― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope