Resilience Part 8: Social Support

When you think about significant catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina, epidemics like the AIDS crisis, or massacres like the West Nickel Mines shooting, there is an immediate sense of community encompassing.

A coming together to mourn the trauma; a collective strengthening to restabilize while reeling from the aftershocks. These events epitomize the strength of resilience in social support...when the weight of tragedy is bourne amongst many, and the survivors stand together in wider-reaching support than any one person could ever provide.

We seem to only be in the beginning stages of finding our way out of this current crisis. Still, the undeniable fact is: though many have spent it solitary, none of us are truly alone in the experience of what this past year has cost us—so many losses, so many changes, across every country on the planet.

Very few will have escaped the year without effect, and when we collectively look back at this time, a generation or more from now, we will have a “Brotherhood” of stories to tell, as our great-grandfathers did from the wars they fought in. In these ditches and battles, we have served together, and that can make us stronger, closer, more empathetic, more open to listening, more determined to fight for a worthy cause.

What we experienced in astonishing numbers acts as a tie that can bind us beyond ethnicity, border, language, or faith...if we let it. And this tie can also strengthen the bond to our more immediate challenges.

Community helps to restabilize.

It helps to organize the chaos.

It brings many hands to the work needed doing now.

It brings many hearts to witness your pain.

It gives space and time to work and focus with purpose.

It brings infinite types of talents and professions, ideas and possibilities to the table.

Which is good.

And regardless of where on the planet we came from, what language we speak, or what color we may happen to be, survival has required that we all work towards a common goal. Even if it means sometimes putting aside our own personal dreams to achieve it.

And we are.

Together.

Because sometimes, it takes a village.

And sometimes, it takes them all.

(For the reference piece that inspired this series, check out Shahram Heshmat Ph.D.'s article "The 8 Key Elements of Resilience: A roadmap for developing mental resilience skills" on Psychology Today's website.)