As a clinical psychologist, which is what I do most of the time, I am, as one might suspect, concerned about resilience. It is one of the main factors in determining “who gets better and who doesn’t,” who makes progress in therapy, and who doesn’t. But I learned about resilience long before I became a psychologist.

I was born with a birth defect, the absence of a left hand. I am sure that when I was learning to walk, life was a bit more exciting having only one hand to hang on to other people and furniture to keep my balance. But to be honest, I don’t remember falling on my face that much, until later in life — like that summer when I kept landing on my hand the wrong way and had to have stitches on three separate occasions.

What I do remember well is learning to tie my shoes with one hand. As most of you know, a second hand comes in “handy” — pun intended — when accomplishing this task. So in the process, a long process, I learned a lot about resilience, e.g., flexibility, problem-solving, and managing strong feelings. I think I said “darn it” a lot. Hey, I was only 6. I hadn’t learned all the good swear words yet.

We’re going to be talking more about resilience and ourselves on this blog in the weeks and months ahead. The “we” I’m referring to are the people who are involved in this project with me. I will give them an opportunity to introduce themselves in the next few weeks and they can tell you why they are involved in the project. They will be talking quite a bit about how they’ve applied the skills and attitudes involved in resilience in their own lives. ……………… Ron Breazeale, Ph.D.