A huge part of resilience is recognizing that we are only resilient because we have faced something in life that made it necessary. Again, this could be anything from the death of a loved one, changing jobs, graduating school, trauma, marriage… literally anything. But the key is seeing that we are resilient because we need to be and this is where compassion comes in. I work in behavioral health and we function under the assumption that anyone we come into contact with has experienced some form of trauma and that trauma is different for each person. This pushes us to act in love, compassion and resilience. We love because everyone needs love, we are compassionate because we don’t know their story and they deserve to be treated as well as possible and finally resilience because we are always displaying the path of recovery and resilience is the heart of that.

I know I am resilient. I can look through my life and see what I’ve experienced which shows me I am standing here today clothed in resilience. I’ll be honest I am often more compassionate with others than I am myself but that too is my journey and it will ebb and flow. Resilience displayed for others with the understanding that they are on a journey to their own resilience is guided by our compassion for that journey. We are evidence that resilience exists just like we carry the hope for them until they can do it on their own. We don’t hold expectations because each journey is different. We just wear our armor of resilience, speak compassion and shine hope in all we do.

Sarah Deats

Sarah Deats is the Hope Inc. Stories Inspiration Engineer. Her goals are to make a connection with everyone that she can while building community, spreading hope, and sparking change. She believes that while life may not be easy, it is never lived alone.