Resilience is wild.
​
And it only happens in the wild, broken places in our lives.

Here's the thing: Resilience requires brokenness.

That’s a hard truth I learned as a resilience researcher, and I wanted to move right on to the happier stuff of bouncing back. I did.
 
I was studying resilience and teaching it to others, but there was one question that I couldn’t explain: 
 
What is someone supposed to do when they are stripped so bare across all domains of life that there is nothing left to build back from? 
 
To answer it, I had to understand the deepest depths of brokenness. I had to learn the dark.
 
In just over a year, I lost everything: my renewed health, my last chance at my doctoral degree, most relationships, and the baby my wife and I were working to adopt. A natural disaster took our house and most possessions. I decided with my doctors to stop aggressive treatments for my disease.

I did the only thing I knew: “vanlifed” my Toyota RAV4 and headed out like a wounded animal in search of a wilderness sanctuary where I could work intentionally on healing.​​

​​​It just seemed right that the wild would be my classroom.

I don’t have it all figured out, but the stuff I’m learning wasn’t in my textbooks, and certainly isn’t written in anything using “resilience” because it’s a trending SEO term.

​This journey is part digital nomad living in her SUV and chilling in the woods.
Part research psychologist digging deep into her favorite topic.
Part creatrix getting back into photography and all forms of making things.
​Part warrior-writer (thx, Audre Lorde) spinning some words trying to make her own life make sense again.

​Follow along if you’d like.

​Depending on who you ask, I’m either a complete failure at life or one of the most inspiring and resilient people you’ll ever meet.

I might be both. 

ABOUT ME