Personal resilience.

A month after her husband of 19 years unexpectedly left her, Cheryl Streeter, * who hadn't worked outside the home in 12 years and had few job skills, signed up at the local community college for a career transitions course, arranged for dependable babysitting services for her four young boys, found a family therapist and hired a lawyer.

Today, nearly six months since her husband left, she's begun training for a new career as an ultrasonographer, is in a rewarding relationship, and has learned things about herself and her own reserves of strength she never imagined. "I didn't believe I was as strong as I am," says Ms. Streeter, 41, who lives in northeastern Pennsylvania, "but my friends and family saw this inner strength in me I never realized I had."

Inner strength. Personal resilience. Optimism. Call it what you will, but a growing body of research finds that having this inner resilience can form a kind of personal shield of armor against the harmful effects of stress. "Personal resilience is the ability to bounce back from what life has to dish out," says Patricia O'Gorman, PhD, director of the Adult Child Counseling Center in East Chatham, NY, and author of Dancing Back wards in High Heels: How Women Master the Art of Resilience (Hazelden Publishing Group, 1997). It's a trait that's often developed in adversarial situations, she says, and honed by necessity.

Jennifer Brady has it. Her oldest daughter, now 7, was born with profound disabilities, leaving the little girl unable to eat, move or talk, capable of communicating only with her eyes. Rather than dwelling on all her daughter, Claire, can't do, however, Ms. Brady, 36, focuses on what she can do. "She thrives on being the queen and watching over everyone running around and having fun," says the Silver Spring, MD, woman. "She's a pretty happy kid, which is nice.

Fairly soon after Claire was born, Ms. Brady returned to school to get her master's degree in special education. Today, she does early intervention with disabled children, a job just as stressful as her home life. Yet work is one way in which she copes with Claire and the demands her disability places on the family, Ms. Brady says. "I realized early on it wouldn't be best for anyone if I were with Claire full time," she says. She's also learned to simply accept her life as, well, her life, instead of constantly pining away for someone else's life.

The optimism she and her husband maintain manifested itself most strongly when they decided to have another child when Claire was 5. Although she worried that another baby could have the same birth defect as Claire, Ms. Brady just refused to believe that it could happen again. Her second daughter, Leah, now 19 months, was born healthy, and just adores her older sister.

Ideally, says Dr. O'Gorman, women should develop their personal resilience before a crisis hits. One way to do that is by appreciating all you do instead of worrying about all that remains to still be done. "If you're feeling more capable, you're feeling less stressed," she says. A sense of humor is also critical.

Of course, there are situations, such as an abusive relationship or lingering sadness, for example, that require professional help to overcome.

It's important to realize that you have choices in your life, that there are always second chances. So you don't have to handle everything perfectly the first time, she says.

That doesn't mean ignoring reality. "It just means refraining it," says Dr. O'Gorman. "If you frame yourself as capable, then you'll feel more empowered." And with that empowerment, you will feel less stressed and less overwhelmed, which, in turn, can protect your health.

For instance, one study found that how a woman perceives stress could affect her health as much as major stressors like poverty. The researchers had women visualize themselves on a ladder representing where people stood in society economically--with those who are best off at the top and those who are worst off at the bottom. Women who perceived themselves as lower on the socioeconomic ladder, regardless of their actual socioeconomic status, had more stress hormones than women at the same socioeconomic level, who perceived themselves as being higher on the ladder. (11)

(10.) The American Medical Women's Association Women's Complete Healthbook. Epps, R., Stewart, S. eds. Princeton, NJ: The Philip Lief Group, 1995.

(11.) Adler, N. Epel, E., Castellazzo, B., Ickovics, J. Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy white women. Health Psychol. 2000 Nov;19(6):586-92.