As a cancer patient, I’ve often been told that I’m brave. I know that people mean well, but that descriptor has never sat very well with me. To me, brave is the firefighter who enters a burning building to save lives or the person who jumps into deep water to rescue someone in danger of drowning. Bravery is defined as the mental strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty. It’s often impulsive or heroic. That doesn’t describe me or my thirteen year journey with neuroendocrine cancer.

Recently, a person whose opinion I value highly told me, “You’re so resilient!” and that word rang true to me. Resilience is a long-term process best described as the ability to endure, adapt, and survive adversity and recover from difficult experiences.

Those who know me well know that I’m a self-professed word nerd. Words matter to me. For more than a decade, the word stable, as in “no evidence of new or progressive disease” which was the final line on my latest CT scan report, has been a favourite word of mine. Now resilient has become another favourite!

So, how does a person build resilience? Becoming resilient is a lifelong process, not a one-time event. Life is rarely easy for anyone. Most of us experience a variety of difficult and upsetting events and circumstances over our lifetimes and I’m certainly no exception. Long before I was diagnosed with cancer, I endured a series of other tragedies and traumas, including the loss of a preschool daughter to leukemia. In each case, I chose to keep putting one foot in front of the other and living life to the fullest extent possible. That wasn’t easy, it wasn’t brave, and I couldn’t have done it alone, but it did help prepare me for life with an incurable cancer. I learned to accept circumstances that I couldn’t change and I also learned to depend on the God who loves me and who promised to take care of me.

In 2 Corinthians 4:8–9, the apostle Paul, who suffered many hardships, wrote “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” That’s resilience!