Tomiko Harvey

I get my resilience from my daughter, Maddie. Every time I think about giving up or playing small, I remind myself that she’s watching. I want her to see that her mom didn’t quit when things got tough. That I showed up, spoke up, and built something real—even when the odds were stacked against me. Read More>>

Xiaowu Zheng

I arrived in the United States when I was 16 years old in pursuit of Fashion Design, despite my family’s overwhelming discouragement back in China. I remember my mother saying, “If you can’t do well here (in China), how do you know if you will be any good at anything else?” At the time, I didn’t know what would happen in the future. Read More>>

Nikki Gomez

I think I get my resilience from overcoming a lot. I was born to a teenage mom in a loving, but poor family in The South Bronx in the late 70’s. There were a lot of challenges growing up that included parental drug addiction, neglect, domestic violence and a lot of instability. When you’re a child in extreme circumstances that are not in your control, you have to be resilient to survive and not lose your optimism about life and the future. Read More>>

Robert Trevino

Resilience is not something I was born with—it was something I developed through life’s challenges, beginning in a home where hard work wasn’t an option, but a necessity. Growing up in a single-mother household, we didn’t have the luxury of wealth or convenience. Read More>>

Shane Marie Kim

My resilience comes from the many obstacles I’ve had to overcome throughout my life. I’ve always believed that some lessons can only be truly learned through personal experience, which sometimes meant being rebellious toward my parents when I felt I needed to go through situations on my own. Read More>>

Htet Wai

My resilience comes from many things, but the main three are my mother, my roots, and the United States Marine Corps.

I was born in Myanmar. My mother was the first in our family to leave everything behind and move to a foreign country alone to support those back home. After my father passed away when I was just four years old, she became both mother and father from a distance. Read More>>

Madison Malley

I would say my resilience has come from freedom, and more importantly my faith.

This is now my seventh year in the hair industry. And I started Malley Made in 2022. Two and a half years ago going out on my own seemed absolutely terrifying. Deep down, I knew that everything I had ever wanted was on the other side of that fear. Read More>>

Stephen Bertram

I believe resilience is a virtue that we are born with, but it must be developed and honed. When we are young and learning to walk, we fall down, but we get up and keep trying. As a young man in the boxing ring, when I got knocked down the reaction was the same, I got back on feet again. Read More>>

Yomarie Silva-O’Neal

My resilience comes from a combination of external support and is built through my experiences. I have learned to adapt and move forward, even in doubt, because I trust the process rather than just the outcome. By focusing on the journey, I allow myself to grow and evolve without being paralyzed by fear or uncertainty. Read More>>

Heather Doyen

I had to learn resilience very early in life. My childhood was tough. I faced challenges most kids should not have to ever face, but it forced me to grow up quickly. I definitely did not have the luxury of an easy start, and that ultimately shaped how I approach everything in my life, especially my career and business. Read More>>

Nyisha Green-Washington

I get my resilience from my ancestors. I come from a lineage of trail-blazing women, my Grandma and Great-Grandmother on my mother’s side, who broke through many barriers with limited resources. Their stories of resilience continue to lift me up when I think the least of myself. Read More>>

While I do believe that some of us are gifted with more of a “growth mindset” than others, I also believe it is like a muscle that must be strengthened with practice. Like others, my life has had its challenges. Read More>>

Jg Collects

I got my resilience from various aspects of my life, stemming from watching my father overcome difficult situations such as dealing with a medically ill spouse, and divorcing a juvenile delinquent son ‘me’. My environment and friends played a big part in my resilience, overcoming gang culture and hustle with them. Read More>>

Marc Russell

Where did I get my resiliency from?

I didn’t have a choice.

I spent 13 years of my life in foster care… bouncing from home to home, learning early on that if I wanted anything in life, I had to go out and get it myself. No silver spoon, no safety net, no “Plan B.” Just grit. Read More>>

Alina Dolitsky

My resilience comes from love, which I believe to be the foundation for any kind of existence. If love is the foundation of our existence then resilience is one of the pillars supported by that foundation. We can do a lot of difficult things for love, and often for that we need resilience, which I believe, like a muscle gets stronger with each experience. Read More>>

Gift Thongpia Hughes

I believe resilience comes from experience and the willingness to grow. Just like Olympic athletes train endlessly before reaching the podium, I’ve learned that the more you practice whether it’s a skill or simply showing up for yourself the stronger and more grounded you become. Read More>>

Daniel Morrison

I recently wrote about several setbacks in my life on Substack, and it gave me a bit of clarity on resilience. I think any resilience I possess has been shaped by the hardest and most humbling moments of my life. Read More>>

Lindsay Anderson

I believe resilience is both a creative act and an act of radical responsibility. It’s the ability to take full ownership of your experience—to stay grounded in your truth while continuously evolving how you meet the world. My resilience was shaped early, through exposure to responsibility and independence. Read More>>

Nicole R. Goode, M.A., ABS, (PsyD Candidate)

Resilience is a word often thrown around, but for me, it is not just a trait—it is the very foundation of my existence. My resilience was forged in the fire of relentless and life-threatening abuse, beginning in my earliest memories and stretching throughout my adolescence.  Read More>>

Gwenyth Hayes

My resilience has been forged through experience—through heartbreak, adversity, and long seasons of emotional instability that left me feeling completely lost and untethered. People who know me know that part of my story. But that’s not where I live anymore. I’ve grown, I’ve healed, and I’ve made peace with the past—not by forgetting it, but by turning it into art. Read More>>

Stephanie Ray-O’Neal

My resilience is deeply rooted in my family’s remarkable legacy. Over 70 years ago, my great-grandparents moved to Minnesota from southern sharecropping backgrounds, armed only with 3rd and 6th-grade educations. Read More>>

Tara Geraghty

Fun nerdy fact, I was the President of the Latin Club in highschool. So I love learning where words came from. The word “resilience” originates from the 1620s, meaning “the act of rebounding or springing back.” I think true resilience is built in the valleys—when life knocks you down, and you choose to rise stronger….and actually bounce back…better. Read More>>

Leah Dortmann

My resilience comes from being broken and having no choice but to rebuild myself. The military gave me discipline and perseverance, but my experience in the prison system truly tested my strength. Being sexually harassed and stalked, developing PTSD and anxiety, and feeling like I had completely lost who I was left me at rock bottom. Read More>>

Ilana Hilley

I get my resilience from shifting my perspective. I try to see challenges not as barriers but as something that can shape me in unexpected ways.
A beauty mark is a blemish, but we call it a different name. We look at it a different way. And that’s what you do with life. You take a negative, and you put a positive spin on it. Read More>>

Lial Abdul-Baki And Cece Cobarrubias

Bloom with Love’s motto is “under the sun, through the rain, you will bloom all the same.” We apply that motto to our own lives because we feel that we can overcome life’s challenges. We are resilient women because we choose hope everyday. We choose to grow where we are planted. Read More>>

Hafsa Koita

My resilience comes from my background, my experiences, and the woman who raised me. I grew up in Paris in a Senegalese household where strength and perseverance were part of everyday life. I saw my mother navigates challenges with grace and determination, and I think that planted something in me early on, a quiet understanding that giving up was never really an option. Read More>>

Fabiola Medeiros

It didn’t appear out of nowhere.
It was built on the days I wanted to give up — but didn’t.
In the difficult moments I faced alone, when no one was watching.

My strength was born from real challenges, deep pain, and fears that once felt bigger than me.
Fears that used to paralyze me — until I faced them head-on and realized that many of them never even happened. Read More>>

Mika McClain

I get my resilience from trusting myself, trusting the unknown, and knowing that no matter what happens, I will figure it out.

Life has tested me in so many ways, through childhood trauma, becoming a young mother, and stepping into entrepreneurship without a clear path. But through it all, I’ve learned that resilience isn’t just about pushing through hardship; it’s about believing in yourself even when things feel uncertain. Read More>>

Caitlin McCarthy

Resilience is defined as the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties, also known as toughness. But I really hate this definition.

I sometimes feel that I am not resilient because I don’t recover from things quickly. In fact, I tend to air of the side of rest and digest to really move forward in anything. I take my time to process things, rest, ponder, think things through, and then probably rest again. Read More>>

Maria Rising

The Roots of My Resilience as a Businesswoman and Person

“I didn’t know failure growing up. I only knew detours.”
That mindset is my power. And I plan to keep walking, building, and rising—one step at a time

My Foundations of Resilience Read More>>

Ally Ritch

Since I was a kid, I’ve faced several different circumstances and situations where I had no choice but to develop resilience. The other option was to give up and let the circumstances define me and claim a victim mindset, but I chose to be resilient. Read More>>

Preeti Sharma

I believe that a person does not come into the world being either resilient or not resilient. Instead, resilience is acquired throughout life, and the social environment plays a central role in this process. I attribute my resilience to my personality traits, upbringing, social support, life experiences and maintaining a positive outlook. Read More>>

Daniel Skeel

Prior to being a Professional Musician, I used to skateboard, as a skateboarder it taught me to do something over and over again until you get it right, once you get it right the feeling you get was amazing. So I’ve taken that through all aspects of my life. Read More>>