Mother’s Day is a perfect reminder that resilience is rarely built alone. Parental resilience is a form of social and external resilience that’s shaped through close, secure relationships, as well as by the support systems that surround us. Leaders who lean into those relationships find joy amid stress and lead with greater clarity, energy, and presence.
Why Mother’s Day Belongs in a Leadership Conversation
Mother’s Day is often seen as personal, whether it involves brunch, a bouquet, or a phone call. And as a mother and a daughter of a mother, I love all three of those.
But for leaders, Mother’s Day is also a chance to reflect on something deeper: the relationships that shape us, sustain us, and prepare us to lead.
This is part of the work in the Ready stage of my Ready, Set, Go® framework. Before we design our landscape or deliver on our goals, we need to discover what sustains us under pressure. Mother’s Day is a perfect opportunity for that kind of reflection.
What Is External Resilience?
In The Joyful Leader®, I describe external resilience as the environmental and support systems that surround us. It’s strengthened by the relationships we cultivate and the environments in which we operate.
For leaders and entrepreneurs, that means leveraging a network of family, friends, and professional contacts to access vital resources such as healthcare, education, and a supportive workplace culture. These factors influence how we manage stress and recover from setbacks. They are also the factors we have less control over, which is why internal and external resilience must work in sync.
What Is Social Resilience?
Social resilience lives inside external resilience. It’s about having close, secure relationships that help support us. It includes spending quality time with others outside of work, knowing where to turn for support, and maintaining positive working relationships with colleagues.
It also encompasses community involvement and philanthropy and includes the connections that strengthen marital, parental, and communal resilience.
What Is Parental Resilience?
Parental resilience is one of the most personal forms of social resilience. In The Joyful Leader®, I describe it as developing close, secure relationships with our children, including spending quality time with them and being their support system.
It’s the kind of resilience that quietly shapes how we show up in every other area of our lives, including how we lead.
Three Generations and the Joy of Connection
In my family, Mother’s Day has always been Daughter’s Day. I call my mother, my daughter, and myself the “Three Generations.”
My mother, Andrea, raised me to be the best version of myself, and I raised my daughter, Alexandrea, to be the best version of herself. The connection between the three of us has shaped how we each show up in the world.
When I was younger, my mom modeled random acts of kindness and reminded everyone around her to do the same. She kept food in her car to share with anyone who asked. As I grew up, I started doing the same, keeping items from Costco in the car, ready to hand out at a red light. Alexandrea always loved being the one to pass over a snack and a bottle of water.
I remember one trip when she was little. We were on our way to visit my parents, and she spotted someone walking with a backpack. She got excited, ready to hand over a snack. I smiled and said, “Honey, that’s a student walking home.” She was always on the lookout for someone she might be able to help.
Years later, when she was crowned Miss Miami’s Outstanding Teen 2018, her entire platform stood on acts of kindness. She raised funds to support people experiencing homelessness in Miami, and the whole family came together to assemble bags filled with toiletries, socks, and T-shirts for her to hand out.
That is what parental resilience builds: not just close relationships but also values that ripple outward.
Quality Time Is the Foundation
For Alexandrea and me, quality time has always been the heartbeat of our connection.
She started dancing at two and a half years old, and together we traveled the country for competitions. We still share simple routines of eating healthy meals, getting manicures or going to the spa, or spending a quiet night at home with a movie.
The simple things have brought us close.
Recently, Alexandrea said something that stayed with me: “I worry that I may not have the type of relationship I have with my children the way you have a relationship with me.”
I told her that love grows. I shared the story of how my own mother was pregnant with my younger brother and worried she would not be able to love him the way she loved me. Then he arrived, and her love grew. Love grows! To love another does not erase the love you already have for someone else.
And then I realized with a smile on my face that she values our relationship and me as a mother. That conversation was the best Mother’s Day gift I could have asked for.
Joy Is a Practice, Even Under Stress
Looking back, I see that some of my most stressful seasons also held some of my greatest joys.
When I was a single mother, I took Alexandrea everywhere with me — to rehearsals, to games, to alumni events. As I write in The Joyful Leader®, if I can do that as a newly divorced mom with a four-year-old, then so can you.
We could not always afford luxury, but we made memories. We still talk about our Disney trip that did not include the parks. Remember Groupon? We drove from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, and everything we ate and did was through a Groupon. From ziplining, to feeding alligators that didn’t chase the food, to driving go-karts, we did all the off-park activities and laughed until we couldn’t breathe. We still call it one of the best trips of our lives.
That trip taught me that joy does not require luxury. It requires presence.
The Smile She Saw Through the Window
There was a season when I was newly divorced and stress had quietly stolen my joy. One ordinary day, I was in my backyard pruning my rose bushes, literally smelling the roses. I looked up and saw Alexandrea watching me through the kitchen window.
When I went inside, she said, “Mom, you haven’t smiled like that in a long time. I miss that smile.”
I didn’t even realize gardening was a calming agent for me until she said that. In that moment, it occurred to me that I was doing something that brought me joy. Joy was not something I had to wait for; it was something I could pursue.
Years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Alexandrea offered another quiet piece of wisdom: “The world needed to slow down.”
Children often see what we are too busy to notice.
You Are Setting an Example Whether You Realize It or Not
Taking care of myself through embracing joy was one of the greatest gifts I gave my daughter. My actions showed her how to take care of herself.
As I wrote in the book, we set an example whether we realize it or not. For you, it may not be your children. It may be your team, your colleagues, a mentee, or even someone you don’t realize is watching.
That is what makes parental resilience and the broader work of social resilience essential to leadership. The relationships we cultivate become the model others use.
A Note for Those Without Easy Mother Stories
Mother’s Day can be tender. Some readers have lost their mother, some have a strained or painful relationship, and some are mothering themselves through seasons their own mothers could not.
Here is what I know to be true: We can be our own mothers. We can choose mother figures who help us grow, and we can build the kind of supportive relationships that nurture us forward.
That work begins in the Ready stage, when we discover ourselves and what sustains us. The deeper work of designing those relationships into our lives is part of the Set stage, which we will explore in the next quarter.
For now, give yourself permission to honor whichever version of Mother’s Day is true for you.
Building Support Systems Is a Form of Giving Back
Part of how I have been strengthening my own external resilience is through philanthropy.
I give my time and energy to organizations that mean something personal to me, including one that raises funds to expose underprivileged youth to the arts. One of my first internships while earning my master’s degree in marriage and family therapy was providing art therapy for grieving children. The arts have always been a form of expression and healing for me.
These days, attending museums, nationally and internationally as time permits, sits proudly on my Joy Menu®. I love that two people can stand in front of the same piece of art and walk away with completely different interpretations. Neither one is wrong, and that’s how we learn and grow from each other.
I also support an organization that raises funds for cancer research, a cause that became deeply personal when my father became a pancreatic cancer survivor.
Giving back, in whatever form, strengthens our external resilience because it builds connection to causes, communities, and people. And connection is one of the most reliable sources of joy.
The Ready Stage Reminder
Mother’s Day is an invitation to slow down and reflect.
Who are the people sustaining you? Where are you spending quality time? What relationships are quietly fueling your leadership?
This is the work of Ready: discovering your joy and what sustains you and identifying the support systems that allow you to lead with energy instead of survival.
The relationships that shape us privately are the same ones that strengthen us publicly. Joy and a strong sense of self are the foundations of performance, not rewards for it.
What You Can Do This Week
Choose one relationship to invest in this week. Make a call to your mother or mother figure, take a walk with your child, have a coffee or tea with a friend, or send a note to a mentor.
Then notice how you lead afterward.
This is not just self-care. This is a performance strategy.
