Resilience is Actually a Skill We Can Build
At the beginning of the pandemic, I was ready to crawl out of my own skin. I’m the type who dreads the upheaval of a snow day— I get super rage-y when time I’d planned to write or work on a house project evaporates, and instead I’m refereeing arguments between my kids, fetching snacks and policing screen time. But lately, even with winter looming, the pandemic worsening, and political tension the likes of which I’ve never experienced before… I actually feel pretty good. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I think it’s partly about resilience—our ability to adapt when life gets hard. I think we sometimes imagine resilience is a characteristic we’re either born with or not, like blue eyes, double-jointed knuckles or the ability to wiggle our ears. But resilience is actually a mental muscle. We have . . . read more