Abstract
This qualitative study, using a scholarly personal narrative (SPN) methodology, explores one woman’s journey of resilience through the themes of mind, body, and spirit. Using personal stories and perspectives, the study details how the author experienced a tumultuous year. The paper examines resilience as a personality characteristic and as a psychological process of meaning-making and growth, and further hypothesizes resilience as existential courage. Posttraumatic growth theory and Existentialism explicate and challenge the narrative of how the author grew from stress and what resilience felt like from the internal experience. The study recommends additional narrative studies of spiritual growth as a result of stress and resilience as meaning-making from trauma. The concluding implications for leadership and universities make a case for nurturing the human spirit as a way of fostering resilience and becoming whole.