Communicating and Creating Resilience in Times of Adversity

When there is natural or human-made adversity from events such as hurricanes, pandemic-level illness, earthquakes, war, gun violence, or economic downturn, the media inevitably show people reacting to the devastation around them. Often these events are taking place far away from us, and at other times the shocked, emotional, and weary people are nearby and may include our own family or friends.

As I write this, thousands of people in the Los Angeles area of Southern California are in the midst of horrific wildfires that have leveled communities. This time the disaster hits close to home for me. Some of the numb people reflecting on their experiences are friends who have lost their homes, businesses, and community.

When I started this blog, I named it “Communication Matters." My central theme has been to focus on how close relationships are literally talked into (and out of) being. This means that close relationships are both created and altered as we interact with people in our lives (Baxter, 2014; Braithwaite & Suter, 2022). Understanding this function of communication is especially important in times of stress and unwanted change. In difficult times, we long for the resilience that grows in our personal and family relationships.

My friend Michael Sedano, one of the founders of La Bloga (the oldest Chicana, Chicano, Latina, Latino literary blog) moved into his daughter’s home in the LA area two years ago, following the death of his wife of 54 years from Alzheimer’s Dementia. His daughter’s home and urban farm burned down in the terrible wildfire. Michael writes about their experiences:

"It all burned down, the house I moved into with my daughter and granddaughter two years ago… and despite my numbed devastation, I found new hope in my daughter's dream house. The fire knocked me down after I'd finally gotten back on my feet. My daughter and granddaughter are Sedano Women. This means they're strong, smart, and indomitable. We shall rise again."

Communicating Resilience into Being

In addition to the pain and sadness, Michael’s message highlights resilience. Rather than a personal or family-level quality, resilience (according to communication scholar Patrice Buzzanell (2010)) is a process found in Richardson’s definition: “the process of reintegrating from disruptions in life” that involves sense-making following the event(s) that have triggered it.

Buzzanell (2018) stresses the importance of communication to create and recreate resilient relationships. She explains: “Resilience is neither something we do alone nor an inherent characteristic that only some families have. Instead, human resilience is constituted in and through communicative processes that foster the ability to create new normalcies” (p. 98).

When coping with adversity, it is normal to wish someone would give us a series of clear steps to take. However, resilience is not found in a single series of the right steps to take. That will likely be hard news to hear at the time, but ultimately good news as we’ll discuss at the end of this post.

Creating the “New Normal”: Five Resilience Processes

In her communication theory of resilience, Buzzanell focuses on how individuals and families interact and create a new shared system of meanings and, in the process, create a new normal (Buzzanell, 2010). She offers five overlapping resilience processes that work together: (a) crafting normalcy, (b) foregrounding productive action while backgrounding negative feelings, (c) affirming identity anchors, (d) maintaining and using communication networks, and (e) putting alternative logics to work.

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Crafting Normalcy. First, people communicate and take part in sense-making as they share experiences and create stories. Communication researchers Jody Koenig Kellas and Haley Kranstuber Horstman (2015) explain how families share stories by which they “create, reinforce, and challenge identity…and make sense of the complex, difficult, and wonderful aspects of daily family life” (p. 87). People establish their new normal in ways that highlight relationship strength and adaptability (Theiss, 2018).

Foregrounding Productive Action While Backgrounding Negative Feelings. Second, people build resilience by creating and focusing on ways to communicate that highlight hope and positivity. As much as possible, people strive to communicate and take steps that are realistic for the situation, help build optimism, and develop their own roadmap (Buzzanell, 2010).

Affirming Identity Anchors. Third, people engage in resilience practices by communicating in ways that help them stress parts of their experiences and identity that highlight who they are and are growing toward. Doing so helps them regain and/or build their sense of identity and who they will be as they move ahead (Buzzanell, 2018). The process of interacting and developing resilience will most likely take winding paths as people create and discover who they are today as they rebuild their lives and relationships.

Maintaining and Using Communication Networks. Fourth, people take part in resilience practices that come from being in relationships (Buzzanell, 2018). This means people will of necessity seek out sources of comfort and help or accept it from others. Our communication networks may include family and extended family, friends, work colleagues, neighbors, church or community members. It may also include helping professionals and organizations that can offer support for both shared and unique needs.

Putting Alternative Logics to Work. Fifth, people may need to develop new ways of thinking about and meeting their needs. This includes reframing who they understand themselves to be during and following adversity, developing the most functional and fruitful ways of addressing ongoing challenges (Buzzanell, 2018).

Implications for Moving Ahead

Moving forward in our own best ways. The good news is that there is no single series of steps or one right way for families and individuals to deal with adversity and engage in resilience. Certainly, people can look at how others in similar situations are proceeding, as long as we remember to do and say what appears to be working best for us.

Using the five resilience processes. People need to be mindful of the best ways to recognize, build, and use these five resilience processes separately and together. They can use multiple processes to interact and take actions that will best create and draw upon physical and emotional resources.

Reaching out and accepting support. People need to carefully consider when and how to interact within close relationships and with those outside their current set of relationships to help co-create the best new normal. At times, people may need to reach out, and at other times, they may need to navigate the assistance offered.

Making adjustments as needed. The road ahead will rarely be a straight path and likely will be bumpy at times. People will undoubtedly need to U-turn at times and seek new directions and resources as they recover, adjust, and hope to thrive.

Creating future resilience resources. In these difficult experiences, people are also creating resilience practices that will serve them at other times in life or help others navigate adversity.

These suggestions match what Michael Sedano hopes for his family as they rise again. His daughter Amelia Sedano McDonald mirrored those aspirations in an interview with Rolling Stone.

“There’s no power. It’s desolate. When the mudslides come, that whole mountain is coming down,” she fears. But nearly in the same breath, she voiced some hope. “I love these people. I love this land. I am this land,” she says. “This place is amazing. It grows amazing people. We have resilience.”