Before we discuss women and resilience, let’s first recap what we know about resilience.
Resilience is an ability that helps us to do three things:
- Heal from trauma
- Handle daily hassles well
- Thrive
There are lots of ways to build resilience, and an easy way to think about these ways is to categorize them into five groups:
- Mental Health: Knowing the truth and healing from lies we have come to believe
- Physical Health: Caring for our bodies and investing in our community
- Spiritual Health: Prayer and regular reception of the Sacraments
- Virtue: Intentionally striving to grow in virtue and fast
- Vocation: Investing in our state-in-life vocations and other callings God gives us.
When thinking about resilience and how to build it, it’s also important to remember that men and women are different, so they may live out and grow in resilience in different ways. This article will discuss these differences and some considerations for women as they build their resilience.
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Women and Resilience
A few studies have found that women are less resilient than men (e.g., 1, 2). However, this kind of research is still early, and some studies have found no differences.
Additionally, when it comes to coping with daily hassles and trauma, two essential aspects of resilience, researchers have found some sex differences.
When coping with adversity, women are more likely to seek help from others and rely on them, communicate their feelings to others, and rely on their spirituality (3). Men seem more likely to view adversity as a challenge to overcome, try to address it head-on, and control it (4).
These findings don’t mean that men don’t cope in relationships and women don’t cope by addressing the problem, but that these are tendencies they gravitate towards when trying to cope.
Overall, this research shows that women may have less resilience than men and that resilience operates differently in the sexes.
The Feminine Genius
We can interpret the above findings through the lens of the feminine genius.
The Catholic Church contains beautiful writings on the differences between men and women. The Catholic belief is that men and women are complementary, and when both live out their unique gifts, we together fully image God and realize our purpose as human beings (5).
For women in particular, Catholic writers have proposed the following as unique strengths of women:
- Fully seeing a person for who they are and focusing on the person (5)
- Empathy (6)
- Adaptability (6)
- Caring (6)
- Helping (6)
- Understanding (6)
- Encouraging the gifts of others (6)
- Cherishing others (6)
- Guarding, protecting, and nourishing others (6)
- Receptivity (6)
- Maternity (6)
Pope St. John Paul II, who helped popularize this idea of feminine genius, grouped these gifts into four categories: (7)
- Receptivity: Receiving life and those around us
- Sensitivity: Sensitive to the needs of others
- Generosity: Giving with hesitation and being available to fill and serve those needs
- Maternity: Nurturing others and caring for life
Looking at women’s unique tendencies and gifts, it makes sense that when facing adversity, we, more often than men, cope within a community, by expressing our feelings, and by being more receptive to God. In contrast, it makes sense that men try to confront the challenge head-on.
These unique gifts of women can also be a helpful lens through which we think about building resilience as women.
To learn more about this topic, I highly recommend The Letter to Women and Mulieris Dignitatem by Pope St. John Paul II and St. Edith Stein’s writings.
Women and Resilience-Building
We’ll discuss how women can build their resilience using the five categories.
Mental Health
When thinking about improving our mental health, one thing that women may especially have to address is the mental health disorders of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Women and girls are more likely to develop these than men (8).
If this resonates with you, seeking treatment may be part of improving your mental health. You can visit the healing resources page to find some helpful resources.
Women’s higher likelihood of developing anxiety makes sense from a Catholic perspective. St. Edith Stein talks about how, since the Fall, our feminine genius can become twisted. One way this can become twisted is that our tendency to nourish and protect those in our care can become an anxiety about them (6). Falling into this tendency may not necessarily lead to a diagnosable anxiety disorder, but it is another consideration when thinking about mental health.
Physical Health
One of the unique aspects of being female is our menstrual cycle and its related hormones. Our menstrual cycle and hormones can significantly impact our lives, so learning to pay attention to and observe our cycles, even if you are not learning Natural Family Planning, is important because it can help you notice any problems and get help to support your overall health. I highly recommend Pearl and Thistle to learn more about this topic.
Additionally, researchers have recently discussed how women can adjust their eating, exercise, fasting, and sleeping at different stages of their cycle to optimize their health. A good example of this discussion is the book Fast Like a Girl.
As always, talk to your doctor before making any changes in these areas, but this could be an interesting topic to consider when caring for your body.
Finally, as we saw above, community is an essential part of resilience for women. So, investing highly in your community as a woman is critical to resilience.
Spiritual Health
St. Edith Stein emphasizes that women should emphasize the Eucharist in their prayer lives. We all need to draw life from the Eucharist, but because of our receptive nature, she says this is a vital part of women’s prayer. She suggests regular visits to the Blessed Sacrament and Mass attendance to be a priority in our prayer lives as women (6)
Christina Valenzuela, founder of Pearl and Thistle, suggests that we can adjust our prayer lives depending on where we are in our cycle.
For example, when we are on our periods and have lower energy, slower, contemplative prayer may be more fruitful, while more creative and communal prayer may be fruitful during ovulation when we might be full of energy (9). You can check out The Language of Your Body to learn about cycle-syncing your prayer.
Virtue
As we think about growing in virtue, it can be helpful to consider how we live out the qualities of our feminine genius and focus our efforts on those.
Additionally, St. Edith Stein talks about faults women are more prone to falling into because of the twisting of their feminine genius due to The Fall. She talks about women needing to keep an eye out for: (6)
- Daydreaming
- Vanity and desiring praise
- Having an unchecked need to communicate
- Greed and hoarding
- Becoming excessively interested in others and gossiping
These faults can be a good examination of conscience and can also be targets of our efforts to grow in virtue.
Vocation
Ultimately, our state-in-life vocations are where our feminine genius is fulfilled, so using that lens to help you consider how to invest in your vocation can be helpful.
Additionally, St. Edith Stein provides a model for all women’s work. She writes that Mary offers a model for women’s work at the wedding in Cana. In this scene, Mary observes things, sees the need, and humbly finds a solution (6). Mary’s role in this story is a great model for all of the work we do.
Conclusion: Women and Resilience
As we can see, women’s resilience-building efforts can be shaped tremendously by their feminine identity. I highly recommend picking up St. Edith Stein’s Essays and The Language of Your Body by Christina Valenzuela to learn more about your feminine genius.
To implement these ideas into your resilience-building efforts, start with your weakest category. Take a few days to consider habits or routines you can start in that area, then take the next several weeks to start implementing them.