Our story
Built from lived experience
Resilience In Us was born from a simple truth: navigating life's daily and greatest challenges is hard enough without having to do it alone, or without knowing where to turn. And within each of us — often hidden, always real — is a strength waiting to be discovered. That discovery doesn't just change us. It inspires the people around us.
About this space
An inspirational space of resilience — for meaning and purpose discovery, moment to moment and until our last breath, inspired by my beloved husband's work with fellow veterans, his colleagues, Viktor Frankl, and my inspiring veteran buddies and acquaintances.
That defiant spirit does not come from willpower alone. It comes from meaning — and meaning, at its deepest, is anchored in love. Only love is real. Viktor Frankl saw it in the most extreme conditions of human suffering: those who had something — or someone — to live for could endure almost anything.
When a person stands in that, refuses to be diminished, keeps going when every reason to stop is present — they become evidence. Not inspiration in the soft sense, but proof. The kind that reaches the person watching from across the room, the one who needed to see it was possible before they could believe it for themselves.
This is also a personal project for my Viktor Frankl Logotherapy diplomate, putting what I have learned to practice to help others. Input resources are selected by me and used by any AI generated output.
A Personal Reflection
With Gratitude
On May 25, 2022, just six weeks after my husband Steven died battling prostate cancer (mPC), I gathered with some of the veterans he had known and loved through his work at the VA in Connecticut. Steven had led resiliency therapy groups with these men — sessions that challenged each person to draw on their experience of trauma and loss as a source of meaning, purpose, and new direction in life. Through him, they had become part of our lives. One veteran traveled all the way from North Carolina to be with us — he had co-led the resiliency therapy groups with Steven at the VA. We met on the Milford Green.
That day gave me one of the best get-togethers I have ever known. I left with a rocket boost of confidence — that there continues to be everlasting light and meaning for everyone, and for me.
These veterans have since become an important part of my own grief journey and growth. They are role models of resilience — not despite their dark and traumatic experiences and continuing difficulties, but through them. They climb mountains every day and find better views and perspective. And they let their light shine.
This website is, in part, my gratitude to them — and a reflection of everything Steven believed about the power of meaning, connection, and the human spirit. I am personally reminded, every day, of the honor and privilege of knowing them, and of their service.
Bernadette Southwick