Women Reveal What Gets Them Through Dark Days

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Last winter, I had lunch with two longtime friends, one 50-something and one 90. It was one of those gray days between Thanksgiving and Christmas when everything feels both glittery and grim. The three of us tucked into salads, sat for hours and chatted. Our conversation could have been sad: My 50-something friend recently lost her father to cancer. Our 90-year-old friend, Barbara, lost two daughters to cancer. I, too, lost my father to cancer, so I understood how our middle-aged friend felt.

But I could not completely understand how Barbara was managing, though I knew that she was.

Her older daughter, Liz, had been a dear friend. She was beautiful and brilliant, a kind and funny writer who passed away in 2018 at age 53 from colon cancer, a few months after her older son’s college graduation and two weeks after her younger sister Nancy’s wedding. Then Nancy was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in 2022.

After Liz and Nancy’s deaths, Barbara and I kept in sporadic touch. I knew she continued to be a devoted grandmother and parent to her son, daughter-in-law, two sons-in-law and four grandchildren. I was grateful we could meet for lunch and discuss our families, friends and hopes.

How was she okay, I wondered? I thought about the people in my life who had survived life-changing events. I knew an extensive support network of friends and family, combined with daily soothing rituals (exercise, meditation, knitting, etc.) helped make people resilient. But there were other factors, too.

I decided to interview people who seemed particularly resilient — all of whom had survived the unexpected loss of people they had lived with and loved. I also checked in with two therapists, both cancer survivors.

I did some research, and it appears that the word “resilience” comes from the Latin verb resilire, meaning “to jump back” or “to recoil." Today, resilience is understood as the ability to withstand or recover from difficult conditions, both physically and emotionally.

Hillary Albert, 63, is a therapist who specializes in grief, anxiety and addiction. “An important aspect of resilience is being able to make room for uncomfortable emotions instead of struggling against them through the use of unhelpful actions — drinking, blaming others,” she says. “Also, being able to provide yourself with compassion during tough times is essential. Many of us judge or criticize ourselves for feeling how we feel, and that piling on is never helpful nor does it foster resilience.”

Albert, an ovarian cancer survivor, says she tries to practice what she preaches: “During tough times, I try to remind myself that I don't have to believe everything I think. I am an optimist, so I remind myself of all I have to be grateful for and how whatever is going on could be worse. Sometimes, a good cry alone is helpful, too.”

I also spoke to Judith Rabinor, a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, co-parenting after divorce and healing the mother-daughter relationship. Rabinor, 82, is divorced and remarried; she’s also a breast cancer survivor who nursed her mother through Parkinson’s. “There are so many different strategies that work for different people,” says Rabinor.

“I’m a relationship person and I gain strength, grit, confidence and compassion from being close to others — from loving and feeling loved — and also from playing pickleball! Whereas my husband gains grit and strength and confidence from playing the piano.” Harnessing creativity can also contribute to resilience: After her breast cancer diagnosis, Rabinor went on to publish her third book, and her first play is being produced.

A few weeks after our lunch, Barbara and I video-chatted. “What has contributed to your resilience?” I asked. "As soon as Liz was diagnosed, I found a therapist,” she explained. "I didn’t want to burden my family because they were suffering as well.” Barbara went to her rabbi, who put her in touch with a psychologist who matches clients with therapists."

Barbara spoke to her therapist every week. “My sessions with her were lifesaving,” she says. “After Liz died, I continued my visits, and then I began to feel, ‘Maybe I am okay now and I can manage on my own.’ And then Nancy was diagnosed, so I continued seeing my therapist.” Out of the blue, Barbara’s therapist died. “I had to mourn for her as well.”

By this point in the conversation, I was dumbfounded. How could she survive the death of two daughters and a therapist? “One of the most difficult things I’ve had to do was to help Nancy plan her wedding while Liz was dying,” she says. “That was probably the greatest challenge I’ve ever had. I said to myself, 'I have other family members and I have to stay strong and not curl up in a ball.’ It was a choice of giving up or going on with my life.”

There were other factors that contributed to Barbara's resilience: One was her older sister. “She was a psychology major in college and a good sounding board for me.” The other factors were close women friends, one of whom is relatively new, and her family: “You can make new friends when you are elderly!” Barbara says, laughing. “Having those friends helped me considerably during the time when Liz and Nancy were suffering. We celebrate each one’s birthday, we go out for walks, we talk on the phone, and we went out for Chinese food for Christmas dinner. It's a real blessing.”

Barbara also works out with a trainer twice a week via Zoom and is dating someone. “My family, when we are together, we laugh a lot,” she says. “We love to laugh, and we do manage to laugh a lot. I use that as a coping mechanism.” Recently, she took three of her four grandchildren to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “To have my four grandchildren together is really a phenomenal high for me.”

Susan Messing, 61, is a teacher, author and improvisational theater performer with the Annoyance Theatre and iO Theater in Chicago. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Divorced from her first husband, Susan raised her daughter, Sofia Mia, as a single mom, and later married her second husband, Michael McCarthy, a writer for Saturday Night Live, in 2012.

In 2017, Susan’s older sister, Bonnie, passed away at 56 from breast cancer. Then Susan’s husband, Michael, was diagnosed with cancer and passed away at 61 in 2020. (One of Susan’s brothers-in-law also died of cancer in 2008.) Soon after Michael’s death, Susan looked at his phone and made an unpleasant discovery: He had been sexting and texting with another woman, to whom he had also been sending money.

“I was very delicate at that time,” she says. “I barely made it through.”

So how did Susan do it? “My therapist saved my friggin’ life twice,” she says. “I remember my father saying something to me. ‘The good news is you’ll get through it. The bad news is that first, you have to get through it.’ If you can try not to deflect it, you will get to the other side. Sometimes you have to start super small. My daughter is okay and I have a place to live. My gallows humor and my friends got me through everything. Humor helps so much. It gets you through the moment so the sting isn’t piercing your heart. Instead of going to another worst-case scenario, you literally take the next right step. And if you can’t trust yourself, go to a friend you do. You think you will never feel better, and then one day, something happens.”

Another thing that helped Susan manage was her role as an improv teacher. “If I learn something, I am going to pass it on as quickly as possible. That’s my gig. Improv is all about shifting. The whole point of improv is to reuse, recycle and repurpose.”

She also walks with friends and exercises: “I go outside and shovel the snow. I do little things that build into big things. You don’t have to make huge gestures for your life to be better. You take one small step. You don’t have to solve it all at once.”

Ellen Gusikoff Stewart, 60, was my first friend (we met in nursery school), and though we lost touch for several decades, we reconnected 10 years ago through Facebook. I knew Ellen’s father died of complications from cerebral palsy when he was 39 and she was 11, and that she had gone to law school, married and had a son.

This past spring, we met for dinner, and she shared that when she was 47 and her son Evan was 13, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and received a bone marrow transplant. “It was like a thunderbolt,” says Gusikoff. “I had never even had a cold.”

How did she manage it all? I asked. After her father passed away, her maternal grandparents spent a lot of time with Gusikoff and her younger sister. And after Gusikoff’s diagnosis, her mother and stepfather stepped in.

“My mother stayed with me in the hospital almost every night. My stepfather came almost every day and just sat in my room keeping me company and reading his book or the New York Times.” A close group of friends took care of making dinner for her family and Gusikoff told herself that she was going to be okay.

“I don’t think I realized how sick I was,” she says. “I just wanted to get back to work and go to Evan’s baseball games.” These days, Gusikoff works out on the Peloton and treadmill, does 5- to 10-minute daily meditations on healing and acceptance and spends her weekends attending her grandkids’ lacrosse and basketball games.

Meanwhile, she has outlived her oncologist.

Julie Fingersh, 58, is the author of the bestselling memoir, Stay: A Story of Family, Love, & Other Traumas. When she was in her 20s, Fingersh’s brother, Danny, who had been struggling with depression, passed away, and her book, which is both tragic and extremely funny, explores how her brother’s death impacted her, her parents and, ultimately, her children.

“I have no idea how I became resilient,” says Fingersh. “But the more I think about it, the more I realize maybe one of my major secret weapons is humor. Humor is such a key to resilience. I’ve really learned a lot about that from my kids. My kids are constantly watching funny shows. They are dedicated to bringing regular humor into their lives, and I can see that it makes them resilient and it's something to fall back on.”

Fingersh also thinks that resilience begets resilience. Her daughter, Jesse, went to college and developed a life-threatening illness.

“The trauma I experienced with Danny really prepared me,” she explains. “As I tried to help Jesse negotiate her illness, I was able to draw on my experience with Danny and have the perspective that, in the scheme of things, she was going to be okay — and we had to learn to redefine what okay is. I think resilience is the ability to constantly reevaluate what matters to you.”

 
What do YOU do to get through dark days? Let us know in the comments below.