The Invisible Black Woman

After break, DBT—dialectical behavioral therapy—was up. The session started like any other, with Nathan easing us in, holding his handouts and giving us his usual options. “All right, today’s topic is resilience,” he announced. “We’re gonna look at it from different perspectives. I’ve got handouts, we can discuss our experiences, or we can switch things up with a video if things start getting too heated.” He looked around the room, gauging reactions, as if preparing himself for resistance. Maybe he already sensed it.

“What is resilience, you think?” he asked, his eyes scanning each of us.

The moment he said the word, I rolled the deepest eye roll the world—nay, the universe—has ever witnessed.

One by one, people threw out words, and they felt hollow. “Withstand,” one person said. “Tolerance,” another added. I could feel my irritation rising. The way everyone kept defining resilience in sterile terms was grating. These words were way too clean for what the real experience of resilience felt like, especially in a world that demanded so much of it while giving so little back.

Then, Nathan turned to me. “What about you?”

The words came out before I could stop them. “I hate that word,” I said, not bothering to soften the edge in my voice.

He blinked, surprised but intrigued. “You hate the word?”

“Yeah,” I repeated, letting the weight of it sink in. “I’ve recently come to hate it.”

He nodded, giving me space to elaborate. But the rest of the room was silent, watching me, waiting to see where this would go.

I could feel the words bubbling up, my anger with this concept that had been twisted into something unrecognizable, something burdensome. I took a deep breath and let them roll out.

“At my job, they use it a lot, under this program called ‘Resilient Leadership.’ Sounds great, doesn’t it? Like they’re gonna help you grow, advance your career, give you support.”

I paused, letting the sarcasm settle in the room.

“They even pair you with a coach, a mentor, someone to guide you along this ‘path of resilience.’ But let me tell you what being a ‘resilient leader’ really means at my job. It means you do ten times your normal workload, and then, when you reach your breaking point, you dig even deeper. Because if you don’t, well, you’re just not ‘resilient’ enough.”

I could feel the tension in the room shift as people absorbed what I’d said. Some nodded in agreement, others looked uncomfortable, but Nathan stayed silent, giving me room to let it out.

“It’s this insidious thing,” I continued. “It’s wrapped up in all the right language—growth, emotional intelligence, self-awareness. But really, it’s just a way to keep you in line, to keep you grinding until there’s nothing left. Because if you break or push back, it’s not the system that’s flawed—it’s you. You’re just not strong enough, not ‘resilient’ enough. They’ve turned resilience into a tool to wring more out of you without ever acknowledging the weight they keep piling on.”

Nathan’s brow furrowed, his understanding deepening. “It sounds like resilience has been rebranded into something more of a weapon than a support.”

“Exactly! They equate resilience with emotional intelligence. If you’re not a resilient leader, you lack emotional intelligence. And if you lack that—well, then you’re just not fit for leadership, are you? It’s exhausting. Absolutely exhausting.”

The group was quiet, but I could feel the empathy in the room. Others had their own struggles with resilience, their own frustrations with the corporate machine that demanded more and more under the guise of personal growth and self-improvement. It wasn’t about building you up. It was about breaking you down and calling it strength.

Nathan nodded thoughtfully, acknowledging my perspective. “It’s interesting how this word has taken on such a charged meaning. In corporate America, resilience becomes about tolerating unreasonable demands and remaining unfazed, no matter what’s thrown at you.”

Another group member spoke up, shaking her head. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. In my workplace, it’s ‘together everyone achieves more.’ They throw that phrase at us like it means something, but all it really translates to is, ‘Do more with less, and don’t complain about it.’ It’s so fake.”

Nathan laughed, but it was a bitter laugh, the kind that told me he got it. “I feel that way about ‘teamwork’ sometimes. I can’t stand those corporate posters with acronyms like TEAM: Together Each Achieves More. It’s plastered everywhere, but it’s the most ungenuine concept out there. When it comes down to it, those ideas are rarely practiced in the way they’re marketed.”

That got a few laughs and nods around the room, and I felt a little of the tension in my shoulders ease up. It was nice to hear that Nathan wasn’t just some outsider analyzing us from a distance; he was in the trenches too, seeing the same hypocrisy we were seeing.

Nathan continued, “It sounds like resilience has been commodified, especially in corporate spaces. It’s no longer about personal growth but about how much more they can squeeze out of you. And that’s not true resilience—that’s just exploitation dressed up in a buzzword.”

I heartily cosigned with vigorous nods at that point. Who knew all it took was a trigger word to get me to talk the most I had ever spoken in the entire time I’d been there!?

“In corporate America, resilience isn’t about leaning into your emotions and using them to push forward. It’s about showing no emotion and calling it resilience. They want you to be unfazed by everything, work insane hours, take the hits without flinching—and then they congratulate you on being resilient, as if it’s a badge of honor to numb yourself to your own suffering.”

I had a lot to say and a lot of thoughts about the word.

Nathan’s expression softened, and I could tell he understood, really understood. “It’s sad that something meant to signify strength and endurance has been perverted into a tool for control.”

Another group member spoke up, a woman who’d been quiet until now. “Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back, though, right? That’s what they tell us, that it’s all about returning to who we were before the hardship. But that’s impossible. Every time we face something tough, we change. We’re never the same after.”

Nathan nodded. “That’s a great point. I think true resilience is about growth, about moving forward, not just ‘bouncing back’ like nothing happened. The original meaning of resilience has more to do with adaptability than sheer endurance.”

He looked at each of us, his gaze steady and thoughtful. “I think the problem is that when resilience is taught or imposed by others, it loses its authenticity. It’s supposed to be a personal journey, a process of adapting to adversity in a way that helps you move forward. But when it’s forced, when it’s something you’re graded on or expected to display at all times, it becomes a burden. It loses the depth and wisdom it’s supposed to carry.”

I nodded, feeling the truth of his words settle over me as he continued breaking it down.

“Outside of work, resilience has a purity to it. In our personal lives, resilience is about survival, about adapting to life’s curveballs because we have to. But in the workplace, it’s just a checklist item. They’re asking us to do more, be more, and when we inevitably struggle, it’s our resilience that’s questioned—not the impossible expectations placed on us.”

Nathan stopped there and let the silence settle for a moment. “What if we reframe resilience as moving forward instead of just bouncing back?”

The idea caught me off guard. Moving forward—adapting in a way that was true to ourselves, rather than conforming to someone else’s ideal of what resilience should look like. Maybe resilience could be something personal, something sacred, rather than a corporate tool to measure productivity.

But that would mean redefining it for myself. It would mean pushing against the narrative that had been forced on me, resisting the idea that resilience meant keeping my head down and taking whatever came my way without question. It would mean creating boundaries, valuing my well-being over the demands of an unyielding system.

Whew.

As Nathan wrapped up the session, his words echoed in my mind: resilience as moving forward, as evolving. Maybe that was the kind of resilience I could start to embrace—not the twisted corporate version, but something deeper, something that allowed me to acknowledge my own struggles and take up space in a way that was authentic.

I wasn’t entirely sure if I was anywhere near ready to feel differently about the word, but I decided that going forward, I would never let anyone else define resilience for me again.

Least of all corporate America.