How I chose resilience over retreat
- Oct 1
- 3 min read
By Adriana Brusi
We all encounter moments that could break us. Times when it feels easier to retreat, to give up, or to accept defeat. For me, those moments stretched over years — and each one forced me to decide: do I retreat, or do I rise with resilience?
I was with my “person” — married for 16 years — in what many saw as the perfect power couple. Behind the façade, though, I endured years of emotional abuse, hiding the cracks from the outside world. At the same time, I carried the private heartbreak of sustaining 11 miscarriages across three years of IVF. The pain was relentless, but somehow I pressed forward, eventually blessed with two beautiful girls who became the light of my life.
Just as I thought I had reached the other side, the foundation of my world crumbled. When my daughters were only 1 and 2½ years old, I discovered my husband had been having an affair with a friend — an affair that had lasted nearly three years. He left, married her, and went on to build a new life, leaving me behind with no assets, no child support, and no safety net. I had to rebuild my life from nothing — not just for myself, but for my daughters.
At that moment, retreat would have been easy. But resilience required me to stand tall in the ruins. With an events company still in its infancy, I poured everything I had into building a business, a name, and a future. I did it as a single mother with two toddlers at my side, determined to show them that strength is not about what happens to us — it’s about what we do with it.
Just as momentum gathered and success was within reach, the pandemic hit. Almost overnight, the events industry collapsed, and everything I had worked so hard to create came to a grinding halt. Once again, life pulled the ground out from under me. But by then, I had learned that resilience is not just about going through something — it’s about how well you go through it.
It’s not about pivoting for the sake of survival; it’s about bringing all you have, every ounce of strength and creativity, as if each day depends on it — because it does.
No one was coming to save me.
And in that realization came the freedom to step fully into my own power. I stopped waiting for rescue and instead leveraged every skill, every connection, every ounce of determination to forge a path forward.
In the process, I discovered reserves of courage and creativity I didn’t know I possessed.
The transformation was profound. Resilience gave me not just a way to survive — but a way to thrive. It gave me the clarity to shed what no longer served me, the courage to build from scratch again and again, and the conviction that we are all far more capable than we believe.
That’s why I share my story. Not because it is easy to relive, but because I know there are others standing at their own crossroads — facing betrayal, loss, or devastation. I want them to know this: you are stronger than your circumstances. Resilience is not a gift reserved for a chosen few. It lives inside you, waiting for you to call on it.
We don’t always choose what happens to us. But we do choose how we rise. And when we choose resilience, we not only survive — we become something new, something braver, something unstoppable.
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