88 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 Some participants cited specific notions of resilience that are embedded in the service members’ military community. One Navy spouse remarked that resilience, to their spouse, meant “Don’t give up the ship” (P8). Another Navy spouse mentioned that for their spouse, resilience was “knowing how to weather the storm” (P7). Yet another spouse noted that resilience “the Marine Corps way” meant their service member must “do their job” (P4). Other participants noted that the root of resilience for the military service member stems from a place of selfless service. Participant 8 commented that the resiliency of their spouse was “more about the man standing next to me, the family I’m fighting for at home, the country I’m fighting for at home, than about their own personal needs.” Adapting, Overcoming, and Persevering Like their active-duty members, spouses indicated that resilience was about adapting, overcoming, and persevering in the face of obstacles. Resilience to one spouse was “being able to rebound or to overcome an obstacle” (P1); to another, resilience meant they must “be flexible, adapt with whatever, overcome whatever it is that you’re going through” (P2). Spouses noted that resilience was not a one-time event. Instead, spouses suggested that their own resilience stemmed from continually persevering. Participant 6 stated that for them, resilience meant not just “going through something difficult and making it out on the other side,” but that they then had to “keep pushing forward.” One participant indicated that their personal definition of resilience and the notion to persevere stemmed directly from their spouse: “I’ve almost kind of adopted a bit of my husband’s thought process, I guess. You just keep going to get things done” (P8). Mindset Our participants indicated that resilience was a mindset that one must choose and that when faced with difficulties, they chose to focus on gratitude, positivity, and growth. For example, Participant 8 stated that, although they had faced and would continue to face challenging and stressful experiences as a result of being a military spouse, they believed that “whatever may come, we’ve been very blessed in our life and we should always be thankful for the life that we have.” Another participant noted that for them, overcoming and persevering meant adopting an optimistic attitude. Specifically, the spouse stated, “sometimes you just have to kinda look at the bright side of things, and you have to find the things that work for you at each place” (P5). One participant drew resilience from a growth mindset: I think it [resilience] is really a mindset switch. I think it’s changing from “oh this is happening to me, how horrid” to like “how can I take this horrid situation and turn it into something good?” And I think that is a big mindset switch. (P7) Resilience Variations Walsh (2012) described risk and resilience as a process of balancing risk and protective factors over the life span. Participants in our study expanded on that idea by suggesting that they reacted to situational challenges along a continuum: I think what I’m saying is there’s different levels of resilience, like sometimes you have to tap into that different part of yourself. Sometimes you have to let it go and just accept the things that come, and sometimes you just gotta pick yourself up and keep on trucking. (P8) Likewise, Participant 3 suggested that resilience takes different forms depending on the situation:
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