Grace Under Fire - An Inspiring Story Of Baby Boomer Resilience

As we continue the research and development for our Resilience for Baby Boomers program, we’ve been interviewing Boomers to better understand their unique resilience challenges – and needs. Some of these conversations are sobering; others are deeply inspiring. Some are scheduled; others are serendipitous. Here’s one that I found especially inspirational:

Last week I sat down at a meeting of a not-for-profit board on which I am a newly appointed member. Next to me was a guy who looked familiar. Sure enough, when he introduced himself – let’s call him Glenn – we both remembered that he had been the civil engineer for a subdivision that was built behind my home more than fifteen years earlier, and that he had designed the storm drainage system that ran through my property.

He told me that several years ago he’d sold his engineering firm to his business partner, and that he was now spending most of his time pursuing his true passion –cabinet making. He also mentioned that around that same time, at age 54, he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

Glenn proceeded to tell me, in a most matter-of-fact way, about how the disease was affecting him – the slight drag of his left leg, decreased strength in his right hand, the loss of his sense of smell, the side effects of the drugs he needed to take. He went on to say that as horrendous as the Parkinson’s diagnosis has been, it forced him to re-evaluate his personal and professional priorities. He made the conscious decision to wind down his engineering business and to pursue his true passion, for so long as his body would allow him to do so.

He showed me pictures of one of his finished pieces – a beautiful Shaker dining table. As he talked about his love for his craft, he also mentioned the difficulties the disease caused him with surprising amounts of grace and good humor. He wasn’t being delusional. He talked about his ongoing battle with Parkinson’s with a steely realism, but seemed to be focusing the bulk of his energy on the work that brought him such great satisfaction.

I started thinking about Glenn’s story in terms of Adaptiv’s resilience training model. No doubt he was incredibly resilient. To be able to live productively and even happily in the face of a devastating disease is all too rare, and I wanted to be able to learn from Glenn’s experience.

We often talk about resilience as being like the Serenity Prayer – having the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. For most of us, the tricky part of this is being clear about what things we can really change and which things we can’t. Clearly, Glenn had found the wisdom to know the difference and was putting all his energy into things he could do something about. And that is making all the difference in his quality of life.

We’re finding that folks now reaching their 50’s and 60’s are starting to grapple with huge issues like sick and dying parents, their own major physical and emotional changes, serious diseases, and financial hardship. We’re also learning that many baby boomers lack the skills they need to stay resilient in the face of these big challenges, and that the resilience skills they require are different from the skills that kept them in the game earlier in life.

As we build out this special resilience training program, we’d love to hear your stories of Baby Boomer Resilience – either your own or someone else’s in your life.