Sometimes just seeing resilience can change out mindset and unlock our own resilience. That’s our hope with the Portraits of Resilience series – we hope the stories below will inspire you to tap into your own resilience.
Cam Kashani
I get my resilience from two places: myself and my parents. From myself, I’ve had to learn how to rise again and again — through heartbreak, personal transformation, and the process of reclaiming my body, my worth, and my power. I’ve faced moments that could have broken me, but choosing to heal and keep moving forward has shown me how strong I really am. Read More>>
Michelle DeMicco
My resilience wasn’t something I was born with, it was something I built, chapter by chapter, as life demanded more of me. I started my career in the fashion industry at a young age, thrown into a world that was fast paced, demanding, and brutally honest. I was fortunate to have an incredible mentor during that time. Read More>>
Kristen Slizgi
I have always been very independent at an early age and somehow knew if something wasn’t working or couldn’t be figured out, it was up to me to do it. When things didn’t seem to ‘work out for me’, I was always quick to change course and try something else. Read More>>
Mark Caserta
My resilience is a direct result of my queerness. Resilience for me exists because of constant, everyday barriers that I have to lift myself over while maintaining my strength, trust and self worth. And this is just a conditioning from childhood, that I was not normal. Read More>>
hergy mayala
I believe my resilience was born with me. I came into this world during a civil war in Congo. The war was literally in our backyard. Most people around us had already accepted defeat and lost faith in the idea that anything could get better. But my parents didn’t. They fought for me and my sister when the world around us was falling apart. Read More>>
Martina G. Efeyini Efeyini
My resilience comes from a combination of life experiences, growth and changes. Over the course of my life I have faced challenges, hardships, and adversity as a neurodivergent woman and as a Black woman in STEM. Whether it was the way I communicated, the clothing I wore or how I chose to share science; people had something to say about it. Read More>>
Zhariah
Resilience is not a foreign concept to my life. I’ve always had to have it, getting bullied in school, losing talent shows. Not getting into the college I want and even applying to 80 festivals fresh off of Afropunk and getting none of them. I know that hard moments are always followed by even bigger moments, or even better ones than we imagined. Read More>>
Joseph Wayne
I’d say my resilience is rooted in three things working together: faith, creativity, and community. First and foremost, my faith anchors me. I genuinely believe God created me on purpose, with intentional gifts that weren’t randomly assigned, things like music, being able to connect with people, sensing the emotional undercurrent in a room, and creating spaces where others feel seen. Read More>>
Kalyn Jacobs
I get my resilience from my faith. My mom instilled in me and my sisters that we can do anything we set our mind to accomplish. I’ve gone through my ups and downs in life and even in my darkest days, I’ve never lost hope in my ability to persevere and become the best version of myself. Read More>>
marilyn starkloff
I’ve learned that my resilience wasn’t built from a single moment. It was shaped over years, through different experiences that forced me to grow even when I didn’t feel ready. There have been many situations in my life, both personally and creatively, where I felt overlooked, underestimated, or taken advantage of. Moments when my kindness was misinterpreted as weakness. Read More>>
Evan Robillard
I come from a difficult upbringing which allowed me to learn at a very young age what was important to me and how to fight to go for everything that I want from my life. Read More>>
Nikolay Velikanov
I’ve learned that real resilience comes from clarity of purpose. There were moments in my career where nothing seemed certain, but showing up every day, even when the path wasn’t clear, taught me resilience in ways no book ever could. Read More>>
Carol Colombo
I believe my resilience began long before I started working in the film industry. From a very young age, I understood that nothing truly meaningful happens without effort, and that if I wanted a life that felt authentically mine, I would have to walk forward with courage, even when the path looked difficult. Read More>>
xiangjin kong
My resilience was shaped quietly and steadily during my childhood. I entered a professional sports program at a very young age, where discipline, endurance, and mental toughness were part of everyday life. The intense training, the physical exhaustion, the pressure of competition, and the constant cycle of failure and trying again were never easy—especially for a child. Read More>>
Ariana Luterman
I didn’t learn resilience in the moments when life was going well — I learned it in the season I thought my life was over. In 2023, I spent nearly twelve months in bed with an undiagnosed illness that stole everything I understood about myself. Read More>>
Fox Smith
To be perfectly honest, my resilience comes from trauma – mixed with a healthy dose of therapy, deliberate gratitude, closely curating my media content, and a strong support system. Resilience to me is like a muscle. It’s the ability to adapt and recover from difficulties, which we can’t learn to develop and hone without going through it. Trauma sucks. Read More>>
Dustin Kron
Going through year one and year two of Skull House Rock really showed me a lot of struggles, but also opened my eyes to a lot of new things. I was able to learn how to operate in an industry I didn’t know anything about, and was able to build amazing connections with some of the most genuine people. Read More>>
Cynthia Trujillo
My resilience comes from growing up in Ukraine in the 90s — a time marked by instability, uncertainty, and constant change. Even though my early childhood was incredibly happy, living in a place where nothing was predictable taught me early how to adapt, think fast, and create my own sense of stability. Read More>>
Kyle Colton
I get my resilience from my coach/mentor/manager Emanuel Millar. Seeing him speaking up to people (on his own behalf or mine) and constantly pushing forward in a positive direction from a place of strength…has given me the resolve to push myself, no matter what challenges or setbacks I may face along the way. Read More>>
Savannah Broeren
I think I get my resilience from a mix of my mom and becoming paralyzed at just 18 years old. That changed every single aspect of my life. I became a permanent wheelchair user before I could graduate high school. I was an athlete and then my ability to do what I loved most was taken away from me. Read More>>
