Meet Roberta Levitow

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Roberta Levitow. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Roberta, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I’m not sure if anyone is born with resilience. Most of us have to learn it the hard way — by trying and failing, getting up, trying and failing again, getting back up and trying one more time. Some people call that grit. I call it resilience. My own resilience came from facing challenges growing up and learning the hard way. But it also came from the good luck of having a large, loving family that persevered and endured in spite of significant obstacles. My sister had to overcome a very serious medical challenge at age 7. My grandparents had to seek refuge in the United States and rebuild shattered lives. I also wanted to be strong enough to survive and thrive. While I swallowed my share of disappointment growing up and throughout a 45-year career as an actor, director, teacher and producer in the theatre, I resolved never to give up. Bit by bit, my resilience started to yield positive results. In the world we live in today, I can’t think of a more valuable quality than resilience.

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?

In 2025, I celebrated my 75th birthday. I’m thrilled to be healthy and alive! One thing that I’m especially excited about is having discovered a late-in-life “career” as a visual artist and musician. My parents were in the animation business here in Los Angeles, so I grew up taking Sunday afternoon family trips to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. While I ended up pursuing a 45-year career the theatre, I always continued to do visual art in classes and at home as a hobby. All the while, I nurtured a secret dream of being a painter like the remarkable artists I saw at LACMA. Over the past few years, I’ve been able to concentrate on painting and I’ve had many of my paintings in art exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve got a website, a newsletter, and I’ve even sold some paintings. I can’t help myself from grinning ear to ear! Meanwhile, my musician husband welcomed me into the circle of musicians playing in our living room over the years and I started adding some vocal harmonies. Now I’m part of the band called Mitch’s Kitchen. We perform irregularly in California, on the East Coast and at Merlefest, an Americana music festival in North Carolina. Creative expression is one of life’s greatest gifts – to be part of creation, celebrating the beauty the world has to offer. Family, friends, colleagues, art making and a daily walk or bike ride are my joy.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

As a Southern California girl, I often joke, “we only surf the waves, we don’t control the ocean.” As a kid, I spent a lot of time at the beach, assessing a wave, jumping above or diving underneath it, noting the tides, avoiding the riptides. Getting an accurate sense of my real surroundings helped me sense and grab the right moment to catch a wave and ride it to the shore. Pay attention to the waves, be flexible, adapt and instead of getting knocked you over, you can ride the wave to the shore. How exhilarating! Flexibility and adaptability mean bending, not breaking and shifting to accommodate new circumstances. Of course we all wish that we could control what happens to us in life. But most religions and life philosophies wisely teach us that we’re not fully in control. Along with a resilience strengthened by flexibility and adaptability, another power of resilience is perseverance. Perseverance requires trust in change and a belief that hard times will be followed by good times (which will likely be followed by hard times, etc. etc.). Human imaginations struggle to see beyond what is happening in the right now. Partly that’s because our brains demand we focus on our current physical needs. So, we cling to what is happening in the present, and often for fear of an unknown we can’t predict. For insight into perseverance, Mother Nature is my favorite daily teacher. When I look out at my garden or take a walk, I’m reminded that summer will bring fall, fall leads to winter, winter is followed by spring, and the plants, insects and animals endure each stage with patience and fortitude. That’s perseverance and endurance. “This too shall pass.” We endure today and wait for tomorrow. We endure tomorrow and wait for the next day. That’s resilience. Resilience is the number one super-power for me, and in no matter what area of life you’re talking about. Resilience is key in personal relationships, in professional life, within community and on the grand scale of politics, climate change, and history. Roll with the changes, ride the waves.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I hope that I have a decade of life left! I remind myself that I might have 30 minutes, 30 months or 30 years. I am training myself to cherish every day with a clear understanding of the fragility and fleeting nature of life. There’s a beautiful quote by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov that I keep above my desk: “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to be afraid.” I always imagine a very narrow swinging rope bridge over a very deep chasm. I should mention that I’m afraid of heights so there’s not much scarier to me than a very narrow swinging rope bridge over a very deep chasm! How can I walk across the narrow bridge without fear? Over the years, sometimes I am simply paralyzed by the fear. Other times, I am oblivious to where I am and I stumble. I am finally realizing that the solution is not denial, but open-eyed recognition of the situation. First step is to be honest and true with oneself. I need to do an accounting. Who am I? What do I value most? What gives me joy? What are my obligations as a good person on this earth? How can I express myself, my values, my joy and my obligations to the best of my ability? I can report that my art-making is my joy; my duty is to myself, my family, my community, to all other humans and to the health of this earth; my values are respect, decency, humility and kindness. If I dedicate myself to these things over the coming decade, and if I focus on these commitments, I will see the strength of the bridge. And I won’t be afraid.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.robertalevitow.com
• Instagram: @rlevitowart

Image Credits

Full-body studio shot: photographer Tony Pinto https://tonypinto.net/ and https://www.instagram.com/tonypintophoto/

All other shots are personal shots by family members.