Real Talk: Mental Health By Sadie Tollberg, Outreach Director The Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at VVSD, Los Angeles www.vvsd.net/cohenclinics
How Practicing Gratitude Can Build Resilience
Resilience Resiliency. The definition of resiliency is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness. That is something that was taught during my time in service, but I do not know if this word was ever used. In the military, you can feel like you are kicked over and over but it is not about getting kicked, it is about getting back up again and becoming stronger each time. I remember thinking that I was always given hard tasks and put in situations where I was scared, and I was not happy about it at the time. But those were some of my most character building and mentally and physically strengthening moments of my career. Additionally, I learned gratitude, which came from recognizing the small things and how important they are in the grand scheme of things. When I was deployed, there were days without water to shower or air conditioning. I found ways to be grateful for the things I did have. I served for a total of nine years, between active duty and reserves, and deployed twice to Iraq with 27 months overseas. I turned 20, 21 and 23 years old while deployed. While other people were off at college, I was learning and getting my education in other ways in the military. 34
WWW.HomelandMagazine.com / NOVEMBER 2022
After active duty, I went to college and received a degree in nursing. I remember thinking that all my classmates were so much younger than me, not just by age but by maturity level because they had not experienced the same kind of responsibility and resiliency that I had with my time in the service. It was hard to relate to them because they did not know what it was like, for example, to sleep on concrete in Iraq. But, if anything, I was able to do one thing with my classmates – show them what resiliency looked like. It was not until I was about to graduate when I had a conversation with a few of my friends and they told me they were watching me and the way I handled things. When there was a hard day in clinicals or after a particularly hard test, I would be there to boost everyone back up. As my senior year approached, we found out my husband would be stationed four hours away for the remainder of my degree. I had to live a single mom life with our three-year-old. This built some serious resiliency and my classmates noticed. I was taken aback because during school, I tried not to bring up my military service. I considered myself a silent professional.