I Am Resilient: Emily Cheng Story 2

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This is Emily Cheng and she is RESILIENT.

Emily and she is resilient.

CONTENT WARNING: The I Am Resilient Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this post and on this website will include topics that you may find difficult.

Describe the situation where you had to be resilient.

I was resilient when I lost my college swim coach to pancreatic cancer. He was a father figure in my life.

Emily’s Story

I actually lost both my high school and my college coaches, who were both father figures in my life. Being a competitive athlete for most of my life has really taught me a lot of life lessons. I think of a coach as someone who cheers you on even when you don’t believe in yourself. They believe in you, pushing you and they really see the potential in you. That really transcribed to me as far as those lessons went.

Really, I take those lessons in terms of me being a nurse and when I’m a nurse for a patient and their family members, I’m really the coach for them and cheering them on. I’m believing in them when they don’t believe in themselves. So, I really took those really difficult experiences and situations and found a silver lining and turned those really difficult times into positive things. Both of my swim coaches really positively impacted me and inspired me to become a nurse.

How did you practice resilience when faced with this challenge?

When you go through difficult times, like losing someone who’s really close to you, you have many different choices to make. To me, you have two choices: you can either process those things as far as learning lessons from them or you can not process them and you can just be very resentful of those situations. I learned from big losses and difficult times how to change my perspective and how to really mould that situation into like a positive thing. 

Please share one piece of advice for people who are going through a similar challenge

Look inwards because a lot of times when we’re facing challenges we look externally for the answers for how to overcome a  challenge. I think, a lot of times, we actually have the answers within ourselves but we just have to look inwards.

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