The Life You Didn’t Choose: Resilience

The Life You Didn’t Choose: Resilience

There are moments that divide a life into before and after.

Before the diagnosis. Before the loss. Before the moment everything changed and nothing would ever be the same again.

For me, there have been at least two such moments: the day I learned I had cancer, and the day I lost my son, Javier. Both times, the world as I knew it collapsed—not gradually, but suddenly, without warning or mercy.

And both times, I had to learn how to live again inside a life I hadn’t chosen.

When the Floor Gives Way

The day I was diagnosed with cancer, I remember sitting in the doctor’s office, feeling the room narrow and blur. The words “advanced” and “metastatic” fell like stones, and everything after them sounded like a distant hum.

I thought I knew resilience. I had spent decades as a leader and educator—managing crises, solving problems, supporting others through loss and transition. But this was different. There was no one to save, nothing to fix, no plan to write.

What I learned in that moment—and in the long months of treatment that followed—was that resilience isn’t about strength. It’s not about pushing through, staying positive, or pretending you’re okay.

Real resilience is about presence. It’s about allowing yourself to feel the full weight of what’s happening—the fear, the grief, the helplessness—without turning away. It’s learning to stay, even when it hurts.

After the Unthinkable

And then, not long after this life altering change, life broke open again.

When Javier died, the language of resilience felt almost insulting. How could any word contain that kind of pain? The loss of a child is not something you “bounce back” from. It’s a permanent amputation—a part of you gone forever.

For months, maybe years, I lived in a fog. The world felt distant and strange, like I had been dropped into someone else’s life. I went through the motions—work, meals, sleep—but nothing held meaning.

And yet, even in that desolate space, something quietly stirred. Not hope exactly, but a kind of instinct for life. I began to notice small things: sunlight on the floor, the smell of baked goods, the steady rhythm of my own breath.

Resilience, I realized, isn’t what lifts you out of grief. It’s what keeps you company inside it.

It’s the force that whispers, “You are still here.”

The Slow Rebuilding

Over time, I learned that resilience is not about recovering what was lost; it’s about integrating it—allowing loss to become part of your wholeness.

In Leading Bravely, I write that grief reshapes us, but it can also refine us. It strips away illusion, ego, and the noise of other people’s expectations. It brings us back to what’s essential.

In the wake of Javier’s death and my cancer treatment, I’m working on rebuilding life (an identity!) that looks nothing like the one I imagined. It’s quieter, more intentional, more sacred. I move slower. I listen more. I let myself rest.

I no longer strive for balance; I seek harmony. I no longer chase purpose; I practice presence.

This, I’ve learned, is what it means to live bravely: to open your heart to a life you didn’t choose and still find beauty in it.

What Resilience Really Is

Resilience is not a single act of courage—it’s a thousand small choices made in the dark:

• To breathe through the fear.

• To reach for help.

• To sit with what is unbearable and let time make it softer.

• To believe, even without proof, that joy will return.

It’s what allows us to become larger than our pain—not by transcending it, but by allowing it to deepen us.

Resilience is the quiet strength of continuing to love in a world that has broken your heart.

Author’s Note

This essay is adapted from my forthcoming book, Leading Bravely: Reclaiming Your Identity in the Face of Devastating Loss so You Can Live and Lead Courageously. In it, I explore how resilience, integrity, and courage are forged in the fires of loss and how we can lead—not despite our pain, but through it.

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