The Drive to Overcome: A Few Words on Resilience, Grit, and the Will to Begin Again

Resilience is one of those words we hear all the time, especially in recovery circles. It’s usually followed by a nod of respect, or a sentence like, “You’re so strong,” or “I don’t know how you did it.”

But real resilience isn’t loud. It doesn’t usually look like triumph. More often than not, it looks like someone getting up in the morning when every cell in their body wants to stay down. It looks like showing up, again, to a meeting where you said last week you’d never use again. It looks like standing still long enough for your hands to stop shaking.

Resilience is quiet. And personal. And earned. And it never comes easily.

What’s more, resilience isn’t something you’re born with. While some people may come into this world with a temperament more suited to stress or change, the real building blocks of resilience are forged through adversity, failure, connection, and repetition. It’s not just a trait. It’s a muscle. And like any muscle, it strengthens when used. Let’s look into the true nature of resilience. Where does it come from? What is it exactly?

The Biology of Breaking and Rebuilding

In the science of psychology, resilience is increasingly understood not as a fixed characteristic, but as a process. A dynamic interplay between brain, body, environment, and belief.

We know that certain brain structures play a role. Particularly those involved in threat detection and emotional regulation. We also know that chronic stress or trauma can weaken our internal systems of recovery, making resilience harder to access in the moment. Still, none of this dooms anyone to permanent fragility. Quite the opposite.

Neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire itself, is one of the most hopeful truths of modern science. Simply put: you can get better at bouncing back. You can teach your nervous system that not all discomfort is danger. You can condition your body and brain to interpret effort as worth it.

Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Grit Over Glory

In recovery, grit often matters more than optimism. Grit doesn’t require you to believe everything will be okay. It just requires you to keep moving, even when you're not sure. Kind of like taking that step over the edge and somehow knowing there will be a step there even if you can’t see it. 

There’s a certain kind of strength that comes from doing something hard without a guarantee. That kind of strength can’t be faked, and it can’t be bought. It’s earned in the quiet moments when nobody’s watching. The moments when you choose to try again. The moments where you forgive yourself for falling, and decide, for no particular reason other than some small ember still burning inside you, to get back up.

That’s what makes resilience sacred. Not the absence of struggle, but the intimacy of it. The kind that says, “I’ve met the darkness, and I kept walking.”

The Will to Keep Going

So what keeps people going when everything in them says to stop?

Sometimes, it’s a purpose, a reason that feels bigger than the pain. A child. A partner. A career. Family member. A younger self who deserves better. A future self who’s quietly waiting. 

Other times, it’s something simpler. Community. A single person who said, “Me too.” A room, physical or or otherwise, that holds space for someone to unravel without shame. That one Friday night meeting that you didn’t want to join… but did anyway.

And sometimes, the drive comes not from hope, but from anger. From refusing to be taken out by something that has taken so much already. From drawing a line, not in public, but in the privacy of your own soul, and saying, “Not today.”

Whatever the source, the drive to overcome isn’t about being strong every day. It’s about choosing to stay in the game, even when the rules feel rigged. It’s about having the courage to keep reaching — and to let yourself be reached.

You Don’t Have to Be Unbreakable

There’s a myth that strong people don’t fall apart. That grit looks like stoicism. That resilience is about holding it together.

But the truth is, healing requires breaking open. It demands vulnerability. It often looks like falling apart in the right places, in the presence of the right people, so that you can start to rebuild with something stronger than secrecy: connection.

If you're reading this and you’re somewhere in the messy middle — between the falling and the getting back up, know this:

Resilience isn’t always visible. It’s not always applauded. But every time you show up, raw, uncertain, afraid, but willing, you’re practicing it.

You’re becoming it.

And that matters more than you know.