My girlfriend Marjorie and I were e-mailing back and forth about this young military wife who said that her life felt like "a never-ending hill." Marjorie, who married a sailor and moved to New Orleans two weeks before Hurricane Katrina, knew exactly what she meant.

"It feels like this past year for me has been a series of one stressful event after another," Marjorie wrote. "The word I would really use to describe how I feel these days is fragile. I do feel as if I have a lower tolerance for dealing with stress than what's normal for me. I don't know exactly how you'd say it ... maybe less resilient than normal?"

Less resilient? Less able to spring back into shape after being folded, bent and mutilated? Yeah buddy, that is exactly how I feel. Where I used to have the resilience of your average bungee cord, I’m now have all the bounce-back ability of mashed yams.
 
But the American Psychological Association is going to help fix all that. Cultivating resilience is one of the top strategies they recommend to military families -- especially in a time of war.
 
The APA defines resilience as the ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress like loss of a job or moving. They say that having resilience doesn't mean that you never experience pain or sadness, it just means that you can feel these emotions and still bounce back to your normal self.
 
That sounded pretty good to me. I miss my normal self. So I called Dr. Russ Newman, executive director of the APA Practice Directorate who has also been a military spouse for the past five years.  I was hoping he would have a nice map up the Never-ending Hill, clearly marked with rest stops, scenic vistas, and shortcuts. I was hoping he would have some kind of regimen we could all follow until we military spouses had the collective resilience of the Golden Gate Bridge.
 
Unfortunately, that isn't the way it works. "There is no one way for any
individual to do it," said Dr. Newman. "Each person has to look at their
own strengths. They have to cobble together their own personal strategy for being resilient." 

Here are some of the things Newman said we cobblers have to keep in mind:

The never-ending hill is not never ending. One of the ways the APA recommends that we build new resilience is to avoid seeing our crises as insurmountable problems. Even though experts are predicting that the military will be in the middle east for years, there will be an end to this conflict just like there was an end to the Cold War. "Resilient people can put thing in perspective," says Dr. Newman. "It's easy to lose that perspective but these things do come to an end. There is a light at the end of the tunnel."

It's a backwards journey. On most life trips we go on, we are cautioned to look ahead plan where we are going, set goals, all that stuff. But when you find yourself on a trip where one thing seems to go wrong after another, you have to walk backwards. We have to learn to look down the hill and see how much we have managed to do so far: the deployment after Sept. 11, 2001. The last move. Three job hunts. Four fast cruises. A couple of kids completely,  utterly and irrevocably potty trained. We have to check things off as another thing accomplished, another hurdle out of the way "It sounds simple," said Newman. "But it does make a difference and it does have an impact."

Have plenty of company. Studies have found that people who develop strong resilience have one thing in common: strong connections. These include good social support from family, friends, coworkers, and other military spouses. Strong religious or spiritual beliefs also help make us feel more connected. Even though military spouses are often far from family and friends, Newman said that long distance relationships still count.

Use the old tools. Usually we think a new trip requires new stuff not this trip. This is a trip where the old tools work best. "People usually have very effective coping mechanisms in their past," said Newman. "They are exhausted now, but those same mechanisms will work again." Newman recommends that we try to remember our last crisis and what we did that worked. Some people find that volunteering makes them feel better. Others need more regular exercise. I¹m big on meeting folks for coffee and laughing a lot. Which I haven't done in a while. Newman says we let these things lapse just because we aren't concentrating. The tool that worked back then will worknow. Dig it up and use it.
 

Get a counselor. This isn't a surprising recommendation for a guy from the APA. But I liked it because we don't have to be psycho to get a boost from a therapist. If we are really overwhelmed, a therapist can teach us how to be more resilient so that we can deal with this tough phase of our lives. Military OneSource offers free confidential therapy sessions to military families.
 

None of those steps seems particularly easy to me, but none of them seems too complicated either. I'm just working on feeling more empowered and less overwhelmed by the things I'm going through. Because my never-ending hill goes only in one direction -- onward and upward and through.