Creating resilience during tough times: What can we learn from military and civilian families?

                                                              Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working with Purdue University's College of Health and Human Resources on an initiative called "Families Tackling Tough Times Together."  Grounded in Dr. Froma Walsh's model of family resilience, the initiative is creating a series of weekly activities and information - with each week focused on one specific aspect of Walsh's model.

As part of the initiative, I am interviewing both military and civilian families about how they have gotten through a difficult life event in the past, and what they learned that might be useful for all of us as we cope with today's uncertainties and challenges during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Military families face unique challenges, but both military and civilian families have lessons to share about how to adapt and create a new normal during difficult times.

In my first interview in the series, I talk with Richard and Shaneika Williams. Richard has served 12 years in the U.S. Army, Shaneika works in the mental health field, and they are parenting three children. They describe a situation where Richard was assigned a new role in the military - working as a military recruiter.  With this new assignment, the family had to move and both parents were working long hours while commuting long distances to work. They then talk about how they got through the situation by maintaining a positive outlook while also taking turns supporting each other.  Maintaining a positive outlook does not mean ignoring or sugar coating difficult circumstances. Rather, it means acknowledging difficulties while trying to remain hopeful and see the positive; it can also involve working together to try and reduce stressors as is possible over time. The couple does a great job of sharing how they did this - I'm sharing a clip from my interview with them as it has real relevance for what many of us are facing today.

Families Tackling Tough Times Together Initiative

We are all - military and civilians alike - facing uncertainties and challenges in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In response, some of my former colleagues in Purdue University's College of Health and Human Services are launching a new initiative - creating a variety of online resources to help build family resilience in the coming months.  As they describe it:

"Families Tackling Tough Times Together is a new Facebook group and community of support helping families to strengthen their resilience while they cope with a multitude of challenges brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic. Every week, new materials and activities that focus on a specific aspect of resilience will be released. Families with children, youth, young adults and elders will find materials tailored for them.  All are welcome; we especially welcome military families. This program is led by Purdue University’s College of Health and Human Sciences with contributions from partners at Purdue and across the country."

The program is based on Dr. Froma Walsh's model of family resilience.  Rather than viewing resilience as an individual trait or characteristic (e.g., hardiness, grit) that some people have and others don't, Walsh argues that resilience is relational - i.e., it is built as family members support each other and reach out to others for resources.  Resilience is a process that unfolds when families encounter major disruptions (e.g., families exposed to the traumas of war, living in communities with factory closings and major layoffs, coping with natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina).  Family members naturally are distressed by such events but resilient families manage to draw/build on their strengths (maybe strengths they didn't know they had until that point), rally, reach out to others for help, and adapt their lives over time.  Walsh's views are similar to those of a number of communication scholars, such as Tamara Afifi and Patrice Buzzanell, who also have conceptualized resilience in terms of how people think, talk, and relate to each other over time.

One of the first things posted on the program's Facebook page is an interview that Professor Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Director of Purdue's Military Family Research Institute, did with Dr. Walsh.  During the 15 minute interview, they talk about what led Dr. Walsh to create her model, her own views on what does (and doesn't) count as resilience, and how her views run contrary to some cultural beliefs in the U.S. (which tend to glorify  the "rugged individual" who struggles alone).  Walsh describes ways in which families can create resilience in three areas (roughly, their beliefs/values, their roles/structure, and their ways of communicating).  She also argues that some families - those who have had to face uncertainties and challenges together in their past - maybe be better prepared than others to cope and adapt together during today's COVID-19 pandemic - but that all families have strengths that they can pull and build on during tough times.

As part of the initiative, I'll be interviewing family members - both from military and civilian families - about their family's strengths and how their family has gotten through a particularly tough time together.  Military families are interesting in this regard as they often have learned to live together: (a) in an environment where big changes (e.g., deployment, change of duty station) happen suddenly and affect the entire family, (b) elements of the future are unpredictable, (c) loved ones carry out essential roles that may put them in danger, and (d) members are physically separated for extended periods of time.  Military families may have lessons to teach all of us about how our families can enact resilience during today's events.  I'll post some short clips from those interviews over time.