I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refused to be reduced by it.

Resilience is defined as the product of the interplay between an individual's biological, psychological, and social factors, and how they make one more or less resistant to adversity. However, recent research and evidence-based practices are showing that because resilience is shaped by internal as well as largely external systemic influences, how we individually conceptualize and approach how we build resilience is unique, layered, and complex, especially for racialized groups.

To reduce resilience to simply the toolkit of strategies we possess to mitigate stress and adverse life events is ineffective. Given each person's different relational and environmental influences, our approaches to resilience cannot be uniform. One person may define resilience as being vulnerable with others about their troubles, but another might see resilience as dealing with hardships in isolation because they were taught that vulnerability is weak or dangerous. Whether or not these approaches help each person is one thing, but how they individually come to define resilience as what it truly means to them is what will carry them through adversity.