The Power of Pluck

By Denise Foley

Why do survivors of tough times often end up healthy and happy?  They develop resilience, a coping skill you can learn, too.

Angela Madsen was a military police officer in the US Marine Corps when she injured her back so severely that she had to take an early discharge. She needed surgery, and when she awoke from anesthesia, she learned that her spinal column had been pierced and she was partially paralyzed from the waist down. She was told that she wouldn't walk again for a year or two, and maybe never. "I did exactly what many people do after something like that. I went through a period of feeling hopeless," says the 47-year-old single mother and grandmother from Long Beach, CA.

And at first, her situation did seem hopeless. She lost her job as a mechanical engineer. She began to gain weight, ballooning to more than 300 pounds. Then came a turning point. A remark by a doctor, who called her physical condition "a waste of a human life," flipped a switch. She vowed she would do whatever it took to get her life back. Today, 14 years later, Madsen is training to be the first woman with a disability to row across the Atlantic. It will cap more than a decade of awards for rowing, swimming, surfing, basketball, shot put, javelin, weight lifting, even billiards--that have made her a Paralympian hopeful for Beijing 2008.

Madsen is what researchers call "resilient"­-someone who is able to rebound from whatever difficulty life brings. She is one of those people who, like Christopher Reeve, make us wonder how we would fare if our own mettle were tested. Would we bounce back or be crushed by the pressure?

"From birth, some people do have a greater capacity to be resilient in the face of adversity," says Robert Brooks, PhD, an assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and coauthor of The Power of Resilience. "But biology is not destiny. That's where life experience comes in." Indeed, a growing body of research on those who've survived some of life's toughest trials--rape, a life-threatening illness, a child's death--reveals a handful of traits resilient people share and other people can develop.

They take control of their lives

As part of her recovery, Madsen returned to the one thing that empowered her in the past: sports. She got involved in a women's wheelchair basketball league and taught herself to surf on her knees.

Experts say she tapped into one of the most important traits resilient people share: They don't see themselves as victims whose fate is in the hands of others. "It's easy to blame other people for your problems and wait until they fix them," says psychiatrist Steven Wolin, MD, coauthor with Sybil Wolin, PhD, of The Resilient Self: How Survivors of Troubled Families Rise Above Adversity. "But then you never get to rise to the occasion and witness your own strength. If you think of yourself as a problem solver, life goes very differently."