We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jennifer Demling Cebe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jennifer, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I define resilience as the ability to adapt and thrive after challenging life experiences. As a person who has experienced not only professional challenges as a doctoral level psychologist, but also profound personal loss in the form of a close friend who committed suicide, the death of my only sibling from a terminal illness, and ultimately the death of both my parents from cancer, I can safely say that my resilience comes from meaningful social connections, spirituality, mental flexibility , and optimism. I could never have made it through some of those challenges without the love of support of others who allowed me to grieve and struggle, but also reminded me that love still lived in the world and I could be the best version of myself even though my emotional landscape had significantly changed. Our brains are wired for deep human connection and if we can open ourselves to the power of those connections, especially when we are vulnerable, those relationships can provide the strength and mental flexibiltiy we need to adapt and grow. Having a spiritual sense that we are made for a purpose and the optimism that we are given the relationships and gifts we need to thrive, has helped me build resilience and successfully navigate the path to higher ground.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a licensed psychologist in private practice. It is my privilege to be able to walk with children and adults on their personal journeys toward healing and health, and I am especially honored to work with those individuals who are recovering from abuse or trauma and forging a brave path forward .
I am also an advisory council member of a non-profit organization Kosair for Kids which focuses on enhancing the health and well-being of children by delivering financial support for healthcare, research, education, social services, and child advocacy.
Finally, I am also a beekeeper promoting the importance of bees and other pollinators to our natural world.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Qualities that were most important in my journey were humility, tenacity, and joy. I truly believe it is important to know what you don’t know and be willing to learn from those with more experience . Additionally, being able to take accountability for successes as well as failures is key, along with being able to own your mistakes and apologize. Tenacity is important because anything worth having is going to require lots of hard work and the ability to keep pushing even when obstacles seem insurmountable. Finally, it’s my belief that you are not in the right field, or you are not on the right path if joy is not a significant part of the equation. Having joy in work and life is what has kept me going when things seemed bleak.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1946)
This book chronicles the author’s experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. His experiences helped him develop a form of therapeutic intervention he later used with his patients. The book focuses on the importance of identifying personal meaning or purpose for one’s life as a way to thrive and be resilient even in the face of extreme hardship. This book focus on how the completion of tasks, caring for others, and facing suffering with dignity can give our lives meaning and he developed his type of therapy, Logotherapy based on these tenants.
Image Credits
no image credits as these were taken by me
