Growth from adversity
adversity
EVENTS
This theme unites participants’ experiences of their capacity to grow following challenging and painful incidents by finding meaning and by making sense of what happened. This process involves redefining one’s identity and self-perception after life-shaking events, as well as discovering and relying on one’s strengths to rise from these situations. For instance, a participant whose colleague had suddenly decided to stop their professional work alliance embraced the situation this way: “Finally, this was a very beautiful opportunity to feel fully at my place professionally”. Another participant related the way she had discovered her strengths and found her life meaning: “My career as a humourist was born! I had found a true meaning to my life. I wrote a play that I then performed on stage!”. In addition to discovering strengths, the process of growth from adversity can bring other benefits: the very way one views their relationship with themselves, with others, and with the world can be changed as part of this personal transformation process. As one participant described it, “I am realising the importance of the changes that happened to my values, to my way of looking at the world and at others”. Another person shared their new-found awareness of their own values, those being “authenticity, self-realisation, personal and professional accomplishments and recognition”.