By Colleen Lelli, EdD (’95)
Undergraduate Pre-K–4 w/Special Education Program Coordinator and Associate Professor, Education
This story was originally published in the Fall 2017 Cabrini Magazine.
After her husband died suddenly at the age of 48, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg noted in a 2017 book she co-authored with Adam Grant, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, “Resilience isn’t a fixed trait—it’s a muscle we can build and it’s never too late to start. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about building the muscles around our backbone.”
The human spirit can be resilient. We can bounce back from adversity, thrive despite living or being raised in an at-risk environment. We can use determination, strength, hope, and perseverance to continue living our fullest lives, even when we know it will be a long road to recovery.
Take Malala Yousafzai, for example. Despite extreme danger in doing so, at 11 years old, the Pakistani schoolgirl began to speak out against the Taliban’s efforts to ban girls from getting an education. On Oct. 9, 2012, Taliban assassins boarded her bus and demanded she identify herself or they would shoot everyone on that bus. Yousafzai spoke up—“I am Malala”—and was then shot in the head. For four weeks, she was unresponsive in an intensive care unit. Her recovery was difficult, yet the doctors were surprised at how quickly she was able to recover. She was in the hospital for three months and then continued her treatment at a temporary home in Birmingham, England, before undergoing further cranial-reconstruction surgery. Almost exactly two years later, at age 17, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yousafzai showed courage and strength that day, and all the days after, as she healed. “They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed,” she said. “And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”
There are different dimensions of resilience: physical, emotional, and spiritual. All three can intertwine and overlap each other.
How does one embody, gain, or build resilience? How is resilience connected to the human spirit? Can resilience be learned?
In my work with domestic violence victims, or survivors, as I prefer to call them, I think about the human spirit and resilience and what it must take for them to overcome the struggles associated with domestic violence.
Survivors often face a myriad of effects as a result of the abuse they endured. The physical and mental impact, the economic impact, and the cognitive impact are all extremely difficult to overcome. Survivors of domestic violence, both adults and children alike, are in the process of healing physically, emotionally, and cognitively from numerous traumas. The effects this can have on the human spirit can seem insurmountable.
Abuse can have an extreme impact on the way a person thinks and interacts with their world. Chronic exposure to domestic violence can result in mental shifts as the mind attempts to process all of these traumas. One example of mental shifts occurring is during information processing in the brain. Information processing may pose a problem for a child of domestic violence when it comes to storytelling; it is difficult to convey the correct sequence of a story from beginning to end. A tip that I give teachers is to ask the child to retell what happened last and work backward. This helps them to cope with the mental shifts they may be experiencing.
Recent research has provided a lot of new information about people who have suffered trauma and the positive effects resilience and grit can have as they rebuild their lives. Tyrone Howard, a professor and associate dean for equity and inclusion at University of California, Los Angeles, said that exposure to trauma has a profound impact on cognitive development and academic outcomes. Children dealing with traumatic situations should not been seen as pathological, he argued. Instead, educators need to recognize the resilience they are showing already. Children in traumatic situations can heal and accomplish growth with a supportive community, which includes family, counseling, and educational professionals who can all model healthy behaviors for children.
Resilience is a process. This process is about how we navigate our world and ourselves. Resilience is deep within us and also comes from support around us. It’s about moving on a positive path to success in the midst of adversity, trauma, and stress. Resilient people identify themselves as survivors, not victims. This is a very important fact and one many survivors of domestic violence speak of often.
Connected to resilience is grit—another important component to improve the human spirit.
Angela Duckworth, PhD, a University of Pennsylvania professor and psychologist renowned for her research on grit, has defined grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Grit is the drive that allows a person to stay on a difficult task over a sustained period of time. Duckworth’s research suggests that when it comes to high achievement, grit may be as essential as intelligence. This was a significant finding because for a long time, intelligence was considered the key to success. With study participants from an Ivy League school, it was concluded that the grittiest students—not the smartest ones—had the highest GPAs.
How do grit and resilience differ? There is a subtle factor between these two that involve character traits. Resilience is the optimism to continue when a person had experienced some type of failure or a tough situation. In fact, others may find the task too difficult or overwhelming and nearly impossible to move on from. Grit is more about the drive that allows a person to continue on the path, over a sustained period of time, to succeed from that difficult situation.
When I have the opportunity to speak with domestic violence survivors, both adults and children, I try to provide the following positive tips to develop grit and resilience:
Be optimistic. Optimism can be infectious, so creating an environment of optimism with positive people will be a life support.
Rewrite your story. Trauma stays with a person. Jerome Bruner, an American psychologist who made significant contributions in cognitive psychology and specifically cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, says we can personally benefit from reframing our story. In other words, we become the stories we create about our lives. Using the trauma and struggle to look ahead and persevere while rebuilding is a sure way to build resilience and grit.
Support others. Support networks of friends, families, and services can help build resilience, but studies show that more resilience can be built from helping others. For example, Martin Seligman, often named the “father of positive psychology,” focused his research on learned helplessness, positive psychology, depression, and resilience. He said, “Well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaningful, good relationships and accomplishments.” Something meaningful or worthwhile, like helping a friend, volunteering, or even making a simple donation, can help someone to push through adversity and enhance strength. It doesn’t need to be a huge charge, but it has to involve assisting others.
Establish goals and live with purpose. What is purpose? It is Cabrini’s motto, but what does it mean? Purpose seems tough to define, but creating smaller goals will lead to a purposeful and full life. Success will increase and achieving smaller goals will lead to purpose, while building resilience and grit.
In October, Cabrini launched the Barbara and John Jordan Center for Children of Trauma and Domestic Violence Education. This endeavor allows us to provide research, training, education, and support to community partners for victims (survivors) of trauma and domestic violence. Through our Education of the Heart, we can teach children and adults alike what it means to live with determination, strength, and courage—all to foster and build resilience and grit.
Watch our video on Cabrini’s Center for Children of Trauma and Domestic Violence Education, and all that we are doing to support Domestic Violence Awareness Efforts.
Colleen Lelli, EdD (’95), Associate Professor of Education, Faculty Director of the Barbara and John Jordan Center for Children of Trauma and Domestic Violence Education, and Undergraduate Pre-K–4 with Special Education Program Coordinator, can be reached at colleen.lelli@cabrini.edu or 610.902.8466.