Resilience Through Difficult Times Webinar
- Jun 11
- 4 min read
There is a common misunderstanding about resilience.
Many people imagine resilience as a kind of strength that keeps us from being affected by life. We picture someone who doesn't get knocked down, doesn't get overwhelmed, doesn't struggle, doesn't lose their footing when circumstances become difficult.
But if that were true, very few of us would qualify.
Life has a way of bringing us experiences we didn't ask for. Illness. Loss. Uncertainty. Caregiving. Depression. Heartbreak. Fear. Moments when we feel lost or overwhelmed and aren't sure how we're going to find our way forward.
In a recent conversation, Linda Pransky and Claire Shutes explored resilience from a different perspective. What emerged wasn't a discussion about how to stay strong. It was a conversation about what allows human beings to recover when life gets hard.
The Circumstances We Never Would Have Chosen
One of the things that made this conversation so moving was the honesty both Linda and Claire brought to it.
Linda spoke about the years following George Pransky's stroke. Overnight, life became something she never expected. She found herself navigating fear, uncertainty, caregiving, and responsibilities she had never imagined carrying.
Claire shared about being born with cerebral palsy and, more recently, undergoing a knee replacement surgery for which there was very little precedent. No one could tell her exactly what the outcome would be.
Neither woman spoke as someone who had avoided difficulty.
They spoke as people who had lived through it.
And yet both pointed to the same thing: underneath all the fluctuations of experience, there was something in them they had come to trust.
Not certainty about the future. Not confidence that circumstances would unfold the way they hoped. But confidence that whatever happened, they would find their way through.
What Changes When We Understand Thought
At several points in the conversation, Linda and Claire made an important distinction.
Understanding the Three Principles doesn't mean difficult feelings disappear.
You still have low moods. You still get caught up in your thinking. You still have days when fear, sadness, frustration, or insecurity take center stage.
The difference is that those experiences no longer look quite so permanent.
When we're caught in a difficult state of mind, it's easy to believe we've become that state of mind. It can feel as though we've fallen into a hole we may never climb out of.
Most people know what it's like to think, "What if this is just how I am now?"
What Linda and Claire pointed to is that our experience is constantly moving, whether we notice it or not. Thought moves. Feelings move. Moods move. Even when we're convinced we'll stay stuck forever, life keeps moving underneath us.
That understanding doesn't necessarily stop us from going down. But it often stops us from being so frightened when we do.
A Conversation About Depression
Perhaps the most powerful part of the webinar came during the question-and-answer portion.
One participant shared openly about living in what felt like a constant state of fear and depression. She described feeling trapped in a cycle she couldn't seem to escape and questioned whether resilience was something other people had but she did not.
The exchange that followed touched everyone listening.
Claire gently pointed out that resilience isn't a personality trait. It isn't something reserved for certain people. Human beings are resilient by nature. We adapt. We recover. We find our way through circumstances that once seemed impossible.
Linda shared her own experience of depression after the deaths of her parents. For two years she struggled before a realization helped her see something she hadn't been able to see before. The depression lifted, not because she fought harder, but because her relationship to the experience changed.
Neither woman offered techniques.
Neither suggested positive thinking.
Neither tried to convince the participant that she should feel differently.
Instead, they pointed her back toward possibility. Toward the fact that she was still showing up. Still listening. Still searching. Still hoping.
And perhaps those things themselves were evidence of the resilience she couldn't yet see.
The Resilience We Forget We Have
One of the themes that surfaced again and again throughout the conversation was that resilience isn't something we create.
It's something we discover.
Again and again, people survive experiences they never imagined they could survive. They adapt to circumstances they never would have chosen. They regain perspective after periods of despair. They find laughter after grief. They find peace after turmoil.
Not because they are extraordinary. Because this capacity is built into all of us.
Sometimes we lose sight of it. Sometimes we become frightened by our own thinking and temporarily forget what we're made of. But forgetting isn't the same thing as losing it.
The resilience Linda and Claire pointed toward isn't fragile. It doesn't disappear when life gets difficult. If anything, difficult times are often what reveal it.
A Final Thought
Perhaps resilience isn't the ability to stay standing no matter what life brings. Perhaps resilience is something quieter.
The ability to trust that even when we lose our footing, something within us knows how to find its way home again.
And maybe that's why so many people left this conversation feeling hopeful.
Not because their circumstances had changed. But because they had been reminded of something deeper than circumstance.
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