My writing has been infrequent this year, as I struggle to maintain a routine with most things. However, I am back in California and day by day I am settling back into the work from home lifestyle.

My running mileage is increasing precipitously week by week. My fitness is a shadow of where it was 12 months ago, but it is better than what it was three weeks ago, so I need to take heart in the progress and look forward to the journey ahead.

Also, my reading has continued and with some hiccups, I have maintained the habit. In fact, I tried to combine fiction with non-fiction and read both Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s book.

Both were amazing reads and shows how both are incredible human beings in their own ways. Barack more cerebral, Joe more empathetic, but both had the key mission to make life better for every American and they were a formidable combination. What I admired was their ability to acknowledge and deal with political stresses while maintaining their family ties to a deeper and stronger depth than many of us can manage in our own daily lives.

The incredible ability to deal with stress and maintain calm, is something I am constantly inspired by and I wonder how much of this ability comes through sheer grit and how much is inherit in their personalities. It is something I witness every day in my job, there is an incredible amount of resilience and I am not sure how I compare.

There are many times I want to lose my temper, want to give up, or think bad of others. I wonder what is going on inside the heads of my colleagues. But then, while I am not that close to many people, when I do share my concerns, I am comforted realize that other people are human, are warm hearted and without realizing are incredibly supportive.

Therefore, strong connections and showing vulnerability helps to build resilience. However, these characteristics are not commonplace in the work environments of today. And with the increasing demands on our time through COVID-19, there is limited time to share our feelings with close colleagues, friends or family.

Also, how we display our stresses is important. When we do talk, do we try to externalize our stresses, or do we admit our own fears and concerns. When I do share, I lean to the former, blaming other people, the environment, the workload and only rarely admitting my own flaws. Luckily, I don’t think I do this to often and I tend to work on acknowledging my own feelings and working through the stresses myself.

Being honest with ourselves and being confortable sharing our vulnerabilities with others is a key component to building resilience. This is emphasized in ‘Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis’ by Robert D. Putnam. And what the author is identifies, our backgrounds and upbringing are the fertile grounds to instill this trait.

If I can characterize the three family backgrounds described in Robert’s book, they would be the ‘Joe Biden’, ‘striving’ and ‘dysfunctional’ families. Taking first Joe’s family, everyone is close and comfortable showing their care and love for one another. But equally, the children grow up in high achieving communities, with high levels of homework, and many extracurricular activities.

This combination of family support and peer overachievement and the ability to practice their resilience on the sporting field allows them to be productive in the high stress environments of the workplace. And if they do fall foul and fall into societal traps or just generally blow-up at the wrong time, they have the support and resources to allow them to work through their issues which in turn can be a vital learning experience.

The ‘striving’ family dynamic, I am more familiar with. My parents were super hard working and had stable jobs and were very motivated to provide to give my sister and me a better life than they had. And they succeeded, my sister and I are living comfortable lives and do not want for anything. But what is common with both our characters is that we both struggle with stress and not comfortable with sharing our concerns.

My parents were very keen for us to do well academically, but extra-curricular activities were seen as unnecessary, and showing weaknesses was not something as a family we were encouraged to do. This was unknown to my parent’s but equally they were focused on getting us to the next wrung of the ladder, which they did admirable. But how my sister and I cope in stressful situations in our adult lives was something we had to learn as we go. But I am lucky, if I did fail or give up in my teenage years, there were second chances in life that I could take advantage of and find a way back.

The final type of family is the dysfunctional family and the children from these families are ill-prepared for adult life and are the ones that need societies support to navigate through the many traps that lie in their path. Any mistake can lead to a life of addiction, crime, or violence. They have neither the emotional support or the example of what a functional adult looks like in their lives. In addition, often their peers have similar issues and so they are surrounded by bad examples and little hope. The school environment therefore is focused on trying to develop the basics of punctuality, sitting and listening and when they do get work, they start at a development level far below that of children from more privileged backgrounds.

There are shades of gray and different sub-types of these family dynamics. But from reading the descriptions, I hope that you are able to place yourself in terms of your upbringing. From placing yourself on the spectrum, you can begin to compare yourself to those outside your immediate peer group.

If you are like me, can function in terms of punctuality, being civil within the workplace in daily situations and recognize the values of hard work and security. Then being vulnerable is the next stage in our development and finding people you can trust is vital to being able to communicate those concerns. Equally, this will be difficult for you but may also come as a surprise to the person you are sharing with. Take it steady at first and try not to frame your problems with a negative mindset. The more you get used to sharing, the more comfortable you will be and when a stressful situation arises, you will less likely seek to protect yourself and work through the situation at hand instead, distancing your ego from what is occurring externally.