Soraya Chemaly challenges the notion of resilience, advocating for collective care over individual triumph. The discussion explores gender dynamics, trauma, societal expectations, and redefining strength and resilience. Embracing body changes, challenging stereotypes, and engaging men in conversations about women's experiences are also highlighted.
Resilience is redefined as interconnected care networks, emphasizing the importance of asking for help and understanding one's needs.
Societal pressure for self-perfection is critiqued in favor of prioritizing care and interconnectedness as core human needs.
Embracing qualities typically associated with femininity, like nurturing and flexibility, challenges traditional gender norms and promotes diverse resilience attributes.
Deep dives
Resilience as Relational
The concept of resilience is explored by the author, highlighting the importance of interconnected webs of care and flexibility instead of the individual prevailing idea. Resilience is depicted as not just mental strength, but also the ability to ask for help, understand one's needs, and listen to oneself.
Cultural Limitlessness and Care
The podcast reflects on the societal pressure for endless optimization and self-perfection, contrasting it with the emphasis on care and interconnectedness. It questions the culture's prioritization of growth for its own sake and advocates for re-centering care as a core human need.
Role of Women in Resilience
Women's resilience qualities and their reliance on interconnected care networks are brought to light in the conversation. The discussion dives into the idea that women are often caregivers and nurturers, and that these traits form the foundation of resilience in many contexts.
Challenging Gender Norms
The podcast challenges traditional gender norms by recognizing and appreciating qualities that are often associated with femininity, such as nurturing, caretaking, and flexibility. It delves into the importance of embracing a diverse range of qualities irrespective of gender stereotypes.
Comedic Reflection on Society
The conversation also touches on the role of comedians in reflecting society's truths and uncomfortable realities through humor. It emphasizes the importance of comedy in highlighting the complexities of human nature and societal norms, providing a lens to laugh at ourselves and inspire critical reflection.
Enabling Conversations on Resilience
The podcast encourages conversations about resilience and care, aiming to redefine these concepts beyond individualistic perspectives. It advocates for a shift towards valuing care, interdependence, and flexibility as essential components of resilience and human connection.
“This is the richness of the traditional wife explosion, right? There's this simple idea that you get to choose. Now you're choosing to emulate a situation that's a fiction in that those women didn't choose anything. They had to dress like that. They had to live like that. They had to be nice to the men like that, because they had no bank accounts. They had no cars. They had no licenses. They had no income. They had no security. So, don't equate these two things because you're just kind of living a dignified version of something that was pretty egregiously harmful, you know. And it's the difference, I think, in knowing that you have an option.”
So says Soraya Chemaly, an award-winning writer, journalist and activist whose work has been at the center of mine. Her now-classic, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger lit me on fire—not only for the deftness of her arguments but also because she is a meticulous researcher. What she gave air to in the pages of that book blew me away. She figures prominently in the endnotes of On Our Best Behavior.
Her new book, The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma, follows a similar path. Soraya takes something we’ve been served as an ideal—develop resilience—and flips it on its head, both widening and undermining this definition. She challenges our cultural myths about this concept and urges us all to shift and expand our perspective on the trait, moving from prioritizing the role of the individual to overcome and conquer to focusing on what’s really at work, which is collective care and connections with our communities. As she proves in these pages, resilience is always relational.
