Resilience: Reframing Survival Beyond Normativity

A critique of normative ideas of resilience that demand compliance, silence, and endurance of hostile systems, and a reframing of resilience through a neurodivergent lens.

Resilience is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Teachers, employers, clinicians, and policymakers love to invoke it. For them, resilience means grit, perseverance, and the ability to bounce back quickly in the face of difficulty. It is framed as a virtue, a personal strength that can be cultivated through discipline and compliance with normative exp…