Grit and Resilience

Have you heard the words GRIT and RESILIENCE?

Grit is defined as “courage and resolve” and that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. If you have kids, you know it is so hard to not protect them from everything. So impossible, in fact, that they will encounter it someday when the lose a friend or go through their first heartbreak. Grit are the defining moments when you feel like you might not make it through something but put one foot in front of the other until you do and live to tell about it. I have had to do this numerous times in my life and I bet you have too.

Resilience is very close to grit. Resilence is “withstand to recover quickly.” Guess what my first question to that? What is QUICKLY? How can you put resilience on a time table? The answer is you can’t.

Who do you know that has GRIT?

Who do you know that has RESILIENCE?

I would argue that it looks different to all of us. The women I look up to have both. I’ve always been drawn to people who have a story. They might be rough around the edge, they aren’t buttoned up, but they are alive and use what they’ve gone through to make a survival guide for others.

A service provider of mine had her baby 4 months early. That’s on the cusp of the percentage of when saving a baby is unlikely but the baby still has a 40% chance of survival. While we were together she had the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on speaker phone as they did rounds of her child’s progress overnight. I watched her attend to me while also listening in to the rounds and finding out how her baby’s progress was. I couldn’t believe this mom was at work, first of all, and even functioning. She told me how she was forced to have the baby early because she would surely die if she didn’t. My heart sunk. What if this baby doesn’t survive? How could she continue on? I told her that I was in awe of her smile and work ethic in the middle of this very difficult situation. Her response was, “life must go on.” Yes, it does.

I see clients all of the time who I am in awe of. They have just been through the worst times of their lives and are sitting in front of me to talk about it. It’s a surreal experience because I know that I have helped them find the tools within themselves to move forward with grit and determination. I am the luckiest person in the world to help my clients with these moments and turn them into something that helps push them forward.

I know that no one looks for these hard times in order to make changes in their lives. But if you’re going to have these big changes, why would you not want to use them to be a stronger person? It’s just like my provider with the baby in the hospital. She could absolutely roll herself into a ball and sleep and cry the day away, but that is not going to help her or her baby. She mentioned that the hospital set up a program where parents who had premature kids go on to mentor other new parents going through what they had. She said her mentor has been her lifeline. I can see her becoming that to someone else who has a similar pregnancy/childbirth issue. And she will be inspiring others without even knowing it, which makes it even better.

So, the next time you’re in a tough time, I want you to think: what can I do with this? It is an invitation. But it’s totally up to you to RSVP with grit and determination. If this resonates with you, I’m your girl.