Resilience is often the x-factor that differentiates between mild and wild success. The stories of most of the wildly successful folks in our community have exhibit an extreme degree of resilience and we’ve come to believe that if our goal is to help our community achieve great outcomes we have to help build resources and knowledge around how one can become more resilient.
Bonnie Low-Kramen
Resilience is bounce-backability. It has had to do with being tested from an early age, starting with experiencing anti-semitism in elementary school. Losing my dad when I was 15 years old. Going through a foreclosure on a house and surviving an abusive marriage. These events either diminish you or make you stronger and I decided that I would be determined to use these experiences to help others, especially other women. Read more>>
Tanisha McMillan
I remember I was going through a legal proceeding for two months and the people I was closest to me weren’t there for me at all. It was the support from the people I least expected to be there, actively seeking legal advice, researching my rights, and understanding the necessary steps to rectify the situation. Read more>>
Brittney Holmon
In my experience, my resilience comes from my faith and my determination to discover my purpose in life. I firmly believe that God created me with a unique destiny and in order to fully embrace it, I had to let go of the old things in my life to make room for the new. This required me to learn to recognize the true voice of God and to follow His guidance. Read more>>
Shauna-Gaye Martin-Boothe
I grew up in a single-parent home in Brooklyn, New York in a bad neighborhood with a mother who was born and raised in Jamaica. Our family did not live near us. Thus, my mother would work all hours of the day and night just to provide a roof over my brother’s and my head. My mother was the strongest person I knew and the only family we saw regularly. She was the only family member growing up that we knew would always have our back. My mother went through tons of trials and tribulations; including fighting cancer twice. Her hard work and sacrifices have made me the resilient person that I am. And I can’t imagine ever giving up when she sacrificed so much to try to give us, her children a better life. Read more>>
Cookie Brown
North St. Louis born and raised. If life has taught me nothing else is that not only is it not fair, but you’d better learn to swing back. I didn’t grow up with money, I became a mother my freshman year of college, and by the time I graduated everyone that raised me, had passed away. I was in “bootcamp” IMMEDIATELY! Read more>>
Fernando (Specs) Carlin
My resilience can likely be attributed to my parents. I have seen them broken down & destroyed by multiple things in their lives yet, if you DIDN’T know you WOULDN’T know. When I was growing up I could see my parents struggling everyday but they would always have a smile on their face and rarely did they ever make it seem like anything was wrong in front my siblings and I. This would continue throughout our lives and it would really come to fruition in 2009. My little brother (Adrian) lost his battle with Brain Cancer in May of that year. The doctor sat my brother, my mother & father in a room and gave us the unfortunate news that there was nothing else that they could do. When you get hit by a train, you have no way of speaking. Read more>>
Dr. Sherell Edwards
Maybe it was being raised with out my biological parents…or maybe it was being a young parent, carrying large amounts of responsibility but stacking the “bricks” of life can build a fortress. Heavy labor builds muscle, strength and in the process, tenacity to keep showing up, day after day. I credit that young girl growing up back in the 70s because she built Dr. Sherell! Her shame, determination, difficult times and dreams blended to develop who I became and I could not be more proud. It took a while but I learned what “grace” was and gave myself permission to share in that space. In that space of grace, I began to be more caring and patient towards myself. I realized it was acceptable to truly “love” and care about me without the guilt. It was the growing phases that carved the resilience. Read more>>
Eva Glock
I’ve found that there are several factors at play when I think about resilience, and how I’ve been resilient in my journey. Establishing healthy habits and routines have helped me recover from setbacks, and have kept me from dwelling on the past. I’ve also learned to allow things to happen organically, and to be open to failure. There’s often more opportunity for learning from our failures than from our successes. Read more>>
Beatriz Santiago Gonzalez
I definitely get my resilience from my FAITH in GOD and every “not so good situations” through my life. I always say that from every situation,problems or suffering in life;something really good comes through. For example;dealing with both of my parent’s illnesses,Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s,i became more aware of things that before i took for granted in my life;like health,family values and being alive all together. Life goes by very quickly so please live everyday as if it is your last,enjoy every moment and be an emphatic person,helping others in need!!! Read more>>
Nahima
To me, my mother defines resilience. She has such strong faith and is a very giving and optimistic woman. Our house was like a central hub for family and friends; no one ever left hungry or without feeling a bit better than they did when they arrived. Read more>>
Erica Xavier-Beauvoir
The art of recovering from bending, stretching, and compressing are learned and passed down from ancestral technology called DNA. I learned resilience because of historical collective resilience. Watching resilient energy pass down from generation to generation and gifted code phrases like “We’re just doing the best we can” or “God makes a way” are the declaration of ancestral spell work beautifully woven into my bones. Read more>>
John Livesay
The place I get my resilience from comes from my 555 method of getting back up fast after life knocks us
down. When we think of ourselves as the movie director of our own life, we can zoom out on any one
experience and ask ourselves “Will this matter in 5 minutes? How about 5 hours from now? How about 5 Read more>>
Adrienne Tolbert
I would have to say I get my resilience from my mother, Adriann Thomas and my two closest friends Carmen Mims, and Alexandria Corder. Those three have been in their own way the type of women I aspire to be strong, resilient, brave, kind.. Read more>>
Brianna Murphy
I was raised by a strong, resilient and supportive mother. I learned from her firsthand what it means to never give up. Life will always throw you trials and tribulations; but how you respond to those is what builds your character and makes you who you are. She taught me that when you are confronted with a setback, you face it head on. You may crash and burn a few times, but you get right back up and keep going. Read more>>
Matt Sanchez
My resilience stems from my youth. It is natural to want to succeed the first time we try something new. It can be a new skill, a new hobby, exploring a new creative field, or simply learning how to ride a bike. We have a natural tendency within us to equate failure with rejection. Use this story as an example. A young boy named David, age 10, grew up in a single-parent household in the roughest part of his neighborhood in The Bronx, the projects. Read more>>
Jessica Payne
My career choices are closely aligned with how I show my love, which is through acts of service, and what I love, which is reading. In the case of my career, I have always sought to show how much I want to help and my love of reading. This led me to first serve as a high school literature teacher, and then as the executive director for Kids Need to Read. Read more>>
Hendrika Masire
I always say I am strong because that was my only option. As an immigrant living in a foreign country with no family, I never really had anything or anyone to fall back on. So every time I get knocked down, I knew it was up to me to get back up and keep going. No one but me can do it. That fact both scared and empowered me. I have taught myself to find beauty in the pain of success. Because one thing I have learned is that achieving a significant amount of success involves pain. It’s resilience and purpose that gets me through that pain. Read more>>
Bing Fu
Growing up I was only one of a handful of Asian-Americans in the area. The majority of the population was very homogenous, and it wasn’t in a way that I related much to growing up. There weren’t a lot of other Asian-Americans either, so I was pretty much left on my own. But because of the situation I was in, I learned to fend for myself a lot, and I developed the ability to interact with a wide range of people with a wide range of interests. There were a lot of bumps in the road, but I believe that I developed a strong sense of resilience through those experiences. Read more>>
Morgan Polite
My resilience comes from my mom for one, I never saw her give up no matter how hard things may have gotten even while being a single parent of 4 . My resiliecne also come from me failing, I’ve failed at different things while being an entrepreneur, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit and dwell on it. I’ve always been able to shift no matter how many curveballs may come my way. I always tell myself “we can’t quit, we too close to our next elevation”. So my resilience also comes from self-motivation as well. I have so many different reasons on why I go so hard the way I do, I have no choice but to be resilient if my ultimate goal is success. Read more>>
Cathy Webb
I believe resilience is the ability to keep looking and moving forward despite your past or even what is going on around you in the present. As the fifth of six children growing up raised by a mother and grandmother, there was no time for self-pity, selfishness, or laziness. Everyone had to do their share. My mother always worked two jobs to provide for her children and her mother. Read more>>
Kyle Flynn
I got my resilience from going through a lot of setbacks in life. As I took on each setback I realized that it was preparing me for something bigger and better than what I could ever imagined. Every setback brings a comeback if you look at it the right way and work hard to overcoming the obstacle. Read more>>
Roxana Line
As an independent storyteller, when the world doesn’t allow me to move forward, I find my resilience in my responsibility to my characters, not thanks to anyone or anything, but rather in spite of it all. I have come to realize that what I was taught to be important and significant growing up may not be so in the real world. I used to believe that the more diverse skills I had, and the more proficient I was at each of the disciplines I pursued, the more valuable as a creative I would become. However, in reality, if a creative person is hired for a gig, it is usually for just one specific thing, and their actual potential often goes heavily underutilized. Read more>>
Tammy Badida
My resilience comes from the long line of strong women before me. My grandmother, my mother, and the many, strong women that walk beside me each and every day. I have watched them all overcome obstacles in their own life that have truly inspired me, motivated me, and created an immense resilient spirit within me to always keep fighting and never give up. Read more>>
