Portraits of Resilience at MIT

MIT’s Portraits of Resilience narrative series shares stories of MIT community members who have faced trauma and hardship, and how they recovered from and overcame their experiences. According to the Portraits of Resilience site, the series hopes to inspire strength within the MIT community and beyond.

“These are people who, through their experiences, have gained profound insights into our human condition, how to meet adversity, and sometimes how to overcome it,” the website says. “Perhaps those experiencing similar hardships will find solace in these stories, and those who have experienced only lesser hardships will gain perspective and deeper understanding.”

The series was produced by Professor Daniel Jackson SM ’88, PhD ’92, with help from Alice Zielinski ’16 and Tamar Weseley ’16, co-chairs of the Undergraduate Association’s Student Support and Wellness Committee.

The Portraits of Resilience stories feature MIT students, faculty, and alumni. Read all of the stories on the Portraits of Resilience website (soulstrong.mit.edu) or in past weekly installments in The Tech.

“It’s funny how when I look back on this year, Bell’s Palsy was probably the best thing that happened to me. It was just this really powerful clarifying force. Before I would get so caught up in my emotions. Something would happen, and then I would have this huge emotional response to it, and that would be my reality and I couldn’t get out of it. Now I have some distance from my emotions. I can make choices.” - Eva Breitenbach MBA ’17

“At MIT, we have to talk about all these pillars of wellbeing. It’s time to do the science to really understand what regulates mood – up and down.  We don’t want to take away Everest:  That wouldn’t be MIT.  We want to climb something even bigger than Everest, but we want to succeed and help people succeed in doing it.  So how do we do that?" - Professor Rosalind Picard SM ’86, ScD ’91

Email resilienceproject@mit.edu to find out how you can get more involved.