We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. Beverly Armento a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dr. Beverly, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I have an image of me at birth: emerging kicking.
t seems that, from a pretty young age, I knew how to bounce back from adversity and chaos. From the time I was five, my life was thrown into an abusive, highly dysfunctional, chaotic home life. At the hands of my blind, artistic, and mentally ill mother, I was physically and emotionally abused over a seventeen-year period of time. In order to survive, my siblings and I, the eldest, needed to invent coping mechanisms, and we each became pretty resilient.
By the time I was eight, I re-wrote several folk tales into short plays that I’d teach my younger siblings. We’d use junk we had around the house to make costumes and props, and presented the plays to Momma and our step-father. My intention was to soften the tone of the household and divert my mother’s attention from any pending anger she might have toward me. At the end of the play was the time I’d ask for something I needed, like material to make a skirt in 4-H. This creative activity worked every time! Little did I know then that engaging in drama or creative play are also ways to develop resilience.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My early life–growing up and coming of age years–defined my character and gave me my purpose for living. I tell readers of those years in my memoir, Seeing Eye Girl: A Memoir of Madness, Resilience, and Hope. It is the story of surviving seventeen-years of physical and emotional abuse, of building resilience and searching for hope. It’s the story of Strong Beverly and Weak Beverly, the story of school and church–the safe places–and the angel teachers who empowered me, who encouraged me, who helped me envision a life beyond the housing projects and the trauma of childhood. And, it is not just my story. This story of surviving childhood trauma belongs to so many who have similar stories. In today’s world where “Mental Health is the number one health issue of our time,” (the U.S. Surgeon General, 2023) this is a story that resonates with many not only in the mental health fields but also with educators and counselors who continue to nurture vulnerable children and with readers whose stories resonate with mine.
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?
Being Resilient
Having a sense of Purpose and Hope
Being able to ask for and open to receive mentoring
Resilience is the ability to bounce back, recover from tough times: kids tend to be naturally resilient but skills of resilience can also be taught to young people as well as adults. There is much research now on resilience and on developing a sense of hope and purpose. Techniques such as participating in expressive dance and art, team sports, yoga, meditation, and developing friendships are often used with children.
Having a sense of purpose in your life enables you to have hope for the future. People have to be able to see themselves in their pictures of the future in order to want to survive the rough places in the road. To strengthen such skills and beliefs, young people can be taught to establish goals and identify the steps needed to reach their goals.
Being open to mentoring from trusted adults, friends, counselors is a healthy trait for children and adults. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate high percentages of youth report feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and stress, and data also indicate many adults suffer with problems related to untreated childhood trauma. Having trusted adult mentors enables one to discuss emotions and sources of trauma. Addressing the problem is the first step to recovery. It took me twenty years after I left home before I was ready to openly discuss my childhood and seek professional help. That is a long time. I now know how important it was for me to think about my childhood in new, more healthy ways. I could not have done that by myself. I needed a professional to guide me, and you may need one also.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
Throughout my life, my teachers were the ones who most influenced me. They helped me see how exciting learning was, how competent I was, how I could achieve anything I put my mind to. They believed in me, and in turn, I learned to believe in myself. I decided to become an educator to “pass on” the gifts my teachers had given me–to my own students, be they children or adults at the University level. Today it is my mission to carry on that work in new ways, by establishing scholarships at my undergrad University (The William Paterson University, N.J.) and the University where I served as a faculty member for over thirty years, Georgia State University, In addition, I’m encouraging educators and adult mentors to envision themselves as Seeing Eye Mentors, those who help students SEE themselves as powerful, as capable, as caring, compassionate individuals, as persons who SEE their purpose in life, who set goals for the future, and who SEE how to plan to achieve those goals. These are the skills and beliefs my teachers instilled in me. Now just “passing it forward.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bevelyarmentoauthor.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.beverlyarmento
- Facebook: www.facebook.BeverlyJeanneArmento
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.beverlyarmento
Image Credits
Photos by Kai Smith of Eikonik Images, Atlanta, GA
