What We Get Wrong About Resilience | Why broken bones don't always make you stronger

We've been sold a story about resilience that's both seductive and incomplete. It goes like this: adversity builds character, trauma makes you tougher, and if you just push through the pain, you'll emerge stronger on the other side. It's the narrative that turns every setback into a setup for comeback, every wound into a badge of honor.

But what if that's not how it actually works?

Susanna Peredo shattered two vertebrae in a car accident when she was five years old. She spent months in a full neck and body brace, watching other children swim and play while she sat on the sidelines. By every measure of our cultural understanding of resilience, this should have been her origin story—the moment that forged an unbreakable spirit through suffering.

When I sat down with Susanna for the Shaping Freedom podcast, I expected to hear exactly that narrative. Instead, she told me something that completely reframed how I think about what makes us strong and why some people thrive after trauma while others remain stuck in it.

Here are three insights from our conversation that challenged everything I thought I knew about resilience:

1. The strongest people don't overcome their trauma—they get curious about it.

Susanna lived for decades without thinking much about her accident. As she described it, "because it's on my back, it feels like it's literally and physically behind me ... And so I hardly ever paid attention to it."

But five years ago, when an artist friend wanted to create a textile piece about women who'd survived physical injuries, Susanna realized she couldn't answer basic questions about her own experience. As she put it, "I realized I didn't have these answers because this happened in 1982 ... and all the documents are in Mexico City, who knows where."

So she started investigating. "I started going down that rabbit hole and interviewing everybody in my family, just out of curiosity. And it took me down the most beautiful route, and it was just so inspirational."

The healing didn't come from the trauma itself or from moving past it. It came from the willingness, decades later, to approach her experience with genuine curiosity. She discovered that her father had kept in touch with the surgeon all these years. She flew to Mexico City to meet him and thank him. She's now writing a book about the experience.

2. True resilience looks like knowing when to quit the wrong thing.

When she was building Vanguard Culture as an all-volunteer organization, she was teaching other artists how to make a living from their creativity while not paying herself a salary. I apparently called her out on this contradiction during one of our early conversations.

Rather than getting defensive, Susanna heard the feedback and acted on it. As she told me, "You changed the trajectory of the organization ... because by February of that next year, I had a salary, [it] was the first time we had ever had an employee."

This kind of resilience isn't about grinding through obstacles—it's about the wisdom to recognize when your approach needs to change and the courage to actually change it.

3. The most powerful question isn't "How do I get stronger?" but "How do I get clearer?"

When Susanna started dating her now-husband, she had what she calls "that super clear conversation" early on about what she wanted.

"I said, listen ... I just want to know, do you ever want to be married and do you want kids? And it's okay if you don't ... It's something that I want. And if we're not a good fit, that's cool. ... But just be honest ... are we on the same path?"

Her philosophy is clear: "You're never going to change somebody's intention, like personal values … that's never going to happen."

This approach—leading with clarity rather than hoping things will work out—shows up throughout her life. As she explained about taking action: "Sometimes people just want to sit and create documents and have another meeting about the meeting and the thing. And I'm like, can we just do the thing?"

The thread running through Susanna's story isn't about becoming invulnerable or pushing through pain. It's about developing the clarity to see what's actually needed, the courage to speak that truth even when it's uncomfortable, and the wisdom to know that some things need to end before better things can begin.

Her spinal cord injury didn't make her stronger in some mystical way. But her willingness to examine it with curiosity decades later, her ability to recognize when her approach needed to change, and her courage to ask hard questions—these choices created the conditions for strength to emerge.

Real resilience isn't about what doesn't break you. It's about knowing when to bend, when to pivot, and when to let something end so something better can begin. As Susanna discovered through her own journey, broken bones heal—but they don't automatically make you stronger. That part is a choice you make every day.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

• Curiosity heals better than pushing through. The strongest people don't overcome trauma—they get genuinely curious about it when they're ready, which opens new possibilities for growth and connection.

• Real resilience means knowing when to quit. True strength isn't about endless persistence—it's about recognizing when your approach isn't working and having the courage to change course.

• Clarity beats toughness every time. The most powerful question isn't "How do I get stronger?" but "How do I get clearer about what I actually want and need?"
  

Learn More

• Explore Vanguard Culture: Discover their events, journalism, and professional development programs.

• Follow Susanna's Journey: Learn more about her ongoing work as a cultural curator, producer, and advocate for arts collaboration in San Diego and beyond.