What is a story of hope? Every day we hear about these stories of people who beat the odds and overcame incredible challenges and feats. Each one may be a little different. Maybe its Jasan Zimmerman overcoming cancer multiple times, or Rachel Foster’s journey from relearning how to walk to running the Boston Marathon 6 months later. Although each story of hope is unique, they all have three things in common: adversity, resilience, and survival.
Adversity
Resilience
Survival
The plain definition of adversity is a difficulty or misfortune. Now, I’m not saying that isn’t true, adversity can be a difficulty or misfortune, but something all these stories of hope have taught me is that adversity offers the opportunity to grow. Stories like Jasan and Blake Haxton prove that adversity can be a gateway to being a happier, more well-rounded person. Enduring and overcoming difficulties or misfortunes allows one to discover new things about themselves and marshal qualities that they never knew they had. William Breitbart, a psychiatrist at Cornell University, summarizes it nicely when he says that suffering is necessary for growth, and that the need to find meaning is a primary force in overcoming adversity. This brings us to our second word: resilience.
Diane Coutu, a journalist who has spent years studying resilience, breaks the trait into 3 parts. Resilience requires a realistic view on life, being open to improvisation, and being able to find meaning in life and the challenges you encounter. That is where resilience blends with adversity. In order to overcome adversity one needs to be able to be resilient and be ready to shift gears when things go wrong. Many people blend the lines between optimism and resilience. Resilience is not a blind, optimistic hope that things will work out. Resilience requires a down to earth view on life to be able to survive what’s ahead.
Survival does not mean merely living. If you recover from adversity and just float through life, did you really survive? Surviving means being able to make the most of your situation. A great example of this is Paralympian rower Blake Haxton. Blake contracted a flesh eating disease in his final year of high school, forcing doctors to amputate both legs. Blake didn’t let that define who he was, and began to speak out about his experience and help those similarly afflicted. Then of course, he continued his career in rowing and became a Paralympic silver medalist. He did not let his circumstance own who he was. In his TED talk he credits a lot of it to his friends and family, who supported him through every step. Overcoming adversity and being able to make meaning of your new life is essential to “survival.”
A true story of hope checks off every box in these three terms. Lets go back to Rachel, and her story. Her adversity was the crash that damaged her brain and sent her into a coma. Not only that but she had to completely relearn how to walk. But Rachel stayed resilient, she pushed through to achieve her goal of running one more marathon. She didn’t let her struggle consume her. Instead she made the most of what she had, and was able to create a new reality for herself, one that she was happy in.
Rachel Foster after running in the 2023 Boston Marathon
A story of hope is one that is meant to inspire. It teaches us lessons about how people overcome incredible amounts of pain and suffering, and turn it into a turning point in their lives. We can look towards these stories and learn how to better our own lives. One of my favourite examples of this comes from the “self-help” genre. The Brave Athlete, by Dr. Simon Marshall and Lesley Paterson, is a book focused on helping athletes with mental struggles during their sport. Their research is all designed around stories of other athletes, and how they overcame their own struggles. By learning from others and their resilience, I was able to apply their stories into my own life and my own struggles. By absorbing stories of hope from others, it gives us the motivation to improve our own lives and create our own story of hope.
