Why do some women rise against life’s currents while others struggle to find their way? I have been thinking about this question because, after all my passages, I believe building resilience may be one of the most important lessons a woman can learn. Resilience is not something we are simply born with. Often, it is quietly built over a lifetime through disappointment, rejection, loss, uncertainty, and those unexpected passages that force us to discover what we are made of.

Some women learn early that the world will not always make room for them unless they learn to make room for themselves. She may discover this during childhood through a parent’s disappointment, family troubles, financial circumstances, or a friendship that turns into bullying. Later, the lesson may arrive through rejection, illness, estrangement, widowhood, or a life that suddenly looks nothing like the one she expected. Hopefully, her woes begin to build something inside her, even though she may not recognize it at the time.

A woman always has a choice in how she eventually responds to hardship, although in the middle of the storm she may not feel as though she has any choice at all. She can allow the experience to define her, or slowly and imperfectly begin asking what it has come to teach her. That, Darling, is where resilience begins.

Resilience Is a Woman’s Crowning Glory

I believe resilience is one of the crowning glories of a woman’s life. Not because she has escaped hardship, but because she has learned how to meet it head-on. A resilient woman has scars. She has memories she wishes she did not carry and chapters she would never volunteer to repeat. The difference is that somewhere along the way, she learns that difficult experiences do not automatically get the final word.

Resilience does not mean a woman never falls apart. I certainly have. It does not mean she never feels frightened, angry, defeated, or helpless. It means that after the disappointment, the tears, and the sleepless nights, something within her eventually whispers, Now what am I going to do? Perhaps she cannot change what happened, but she can begin deciding what happens next.

That is why I call resilience a crowning glory. Beauty changes. Circumstances change. Roles change. People come into our lives and leave them. But the inner strength earned by surviving what we thought we could not survive becomes part of us. We carry it into the next passage, often without realizing that an earlier storm has already taught us how to navigate rough water.

Building Resilience Means Learning to Swim Upstream

I think of the salmon. Born in fresh water, the salmon eventually journeys to the sea. When it is time to return, it swims upstream against powerful currents, navigating an arduous path filled with obstacles. It does not search for the easy current. It continues forward toward where it needs to go.

Women do the same thing throughout our lives. There are passages when everything seems to be flowing in the opposite direction and simply keeping our heads above water requires enormous energy. A child may be bullied or experience her parents’ divorce. A young woman may face rejection from a college, sorority, friendship, or job. Later come financial troubles, illness, estrangement, bereavement, disappointment, caregiving, and sometimes the unexpected loss of the life we believed we would have.

When the current is strong, we naturally want calmer water. But sometimes the very act of swimming against that current is building resilience within us. We strengthen muscles we did not know we had. We learn when to push, when to rest, when to change direction, and when to accept that there is no way around a particular obstacle. The only path is through it.

Every Difficult Passage Can Teach Us Something

I do not believe hardship is automatically a gift. When a woman is hurting, she does not need someone standing beside her explaining why she should be grateful for the lesson. There are passages that are unfair, heartbreaking, and deeply painful. I would gladly have spared myself and those I love from several of mine.

But once we have survived an experience, we have another choice. We can ask, What did this teach me about myself? Disappointment can teach discernment. Rejection can teach self respect. Failure can reveal a strength that success never required us to discover. Loss can deepen compassion, and beginning again can show us that we are capable of surviving with dignity and newfound power.

This does not happen overnight. Building resilience is gradual. Often, you do not recognize that you have become stronger until the next difficult passage arrives and you notice something different about yourself. You are still frightened. You still hurt. But somewhere inside, you hear another voice saying, I have been through difficult passages before. I know how to keep swimming.

My Resilience Began in Kankakee by the Sea

When I look backward at my own life, I see that my resilience was developing long before I had a name for it. Growing up in Kankakee by the Sea taught me how to navigate being different and how to develop my own identity. At the time, I was simply living my childhood. Today, I understand that those experiences were preparing me for later passages.

Then life continued to educate me. I experienced severe financial loss during my first marriage while working to keep my family together. I became a young widow. I survived the Big C. Years later came the devastating experience of adult-child estrangement. And today, I am caring for my beloved Ultimate Concierge as vascular dementia changes the man I have known, loved, depended upon, and shared my life with.

I would never have chosen these experiences as my teachers. Yet each one forced me to develop something I would eventually need again: independence, courage, patience, self knowledge, perseverance, or the ability to live for a time without knowing how the story would end. These lessons did not come from a book. They came from authentic participation in my own life.

One Passage Prepares You for Another

This is the truth: if I had not grown up in Kankakee by the Sea, experienced financial loss, survived widowhood at a young age, and faced cancer, I do not believe I would have been the same woman when estrangement entered my life. And the woman who survived those years of estrangement is part of the woman who now sits beside her Ultimate Concierge as he struggles with vascular dementia.

One hardship did not make the next one painless. Please understand that distinction. Experience does not make us immune to grief. I did not become so resilient that estrangement could not hurt me or that watching my Ultimate Concierge decline does not break my heart. Resilience does not build a wall around your feelings. In fact, I believe the strongest women allow themselves to feel deeply.

What my past gave me was proof. Proof that I had walked through frightening passages before. Proof that I had made decisions when no perfect answer existed. Proof that I could hurt terribly and still eventually find another reason to participate in life. Every crossing left something behind for the next one.

Building Resilience Does Not Mean Doing It Perfectly

Women sometimes imagine resilience as strength without vulnerability. I see it differently. Resilience can look like getting out of bed after a sleepless night and doing the next necessary thing. It can mean asking for help. It can mean admitting that you do not know what to do. It can mean sitting quietly with your grief instead of forcing yourself to pretend you are fine.

Sometimes resilience is taking action. Other times, it is having the patience not to make a decision before you are ready. There have been answers in my life that took years for me to live into. Looking back, I understand that I was building resilience during those years even when I thought I was simply struggling to survive.

A woman does not need to perform her strength for anyone. She does not have to prove that she is coping beautifully. Darling, some passages are messy. The goal is not to swim upstream looking glamorous! The goal is to keep moving toward yourself, even when progress is slow.

Do Not Waste What Life Has Taught You

Age has given me something I could never have possessed as a young woman: evidence. I have decades of proof inside my head that reminds me I have encountered rough currents before. I have made mistakes, survived surprises, faced losses, altered my plans, and lived through chapters that once seemed impossible.

That is one of the gifts of building resilience over a lifetime. We accumulate a private library of experience. When the next passage arrives, we can reach backward and borrow from the woman we were. What did she learn? What mistake will I not repeat? What strength did she discover? What helped her keep going when she could not see the shore?

Do not waste those lessons. They were expensive! You paid for them with tears, time, disappointment, courage, sleepless nights, and sometimes broken dreams. Use them. Let the woman you were help the woman you are becoming.

 

Keep Swimming Upstream

Today, I am in another powerful current. Watching my Ultimate Concierge struggle with vascular dementia is among the most painful passages of my life. I cannot fix what is happening to him. I cannot turn the current around simply because I desperately wish I could. I can only love him, protect him, care for him, and continue learning what this passage is asking of me.

And perhaps that is why I find myself thinking about resilience now. I am reminding myself that the woman sitting here today was shaped by every woman I have already been. The little girl in Kankakee by the Sea is still inside me. The young mother who protected her family is here. The widow is here. The cancer survivor is here. The estranged mother and grandmother who continued searching for an answer is here. None of those women disappeared when her particular storm ended. Each became part of me.

Darling, the current will change throughout your life. Sometimes you will float easily. Sometimes you will feel as though you are swimming with every ounce of strength you possess. When that happens, remember that the struggle itself may be building something you cannot yet see. Keep your head above water. Use everything your previous passages taught you. And continue swimming toward the woman you are still becoming.

The Crowning Glory of a Resilient Woman

I no longer believe resilience means returning to exactly who you were before something difficult happened. How could it? Every meaningful experience changes us. The goal is not to swim upstream only to arrive as the same woman who entered the water.

The resilient woman comes out carrying something new. Perhaps it is wisdom. Perhaps compassion. Perhaps courage, discernment, independence, boundaries, patience, or simply the knowledge that she can survive uncertainty. She may be tired. She may carry scars. But she knows herself differently because she has met herself under pressure.

That is why resilience is a woman’s crowning glory. It is not given to her. She earns it passage by passage, current by current, lesson by lesson. And when life asks her once again to swim upstream, she may not welcome the journey, but somewhere deep inside she knows she has done hard things before. I know I have. And I am still swimming.

What difficult passage in your life taught you something about your own resilience? Looking back, did an earlier experience prepare you for a challenge you faced later? I would love to hear your story in the comments below.