When I think about resilience, I think about the quiet force that carries us forward. None of us would be here without it. Every person alive today carries evidence of resilience in their very existence. Imagine wrangling 1,024 people across 10 generations to arrive at the confluence of events that creates a single person. Against impossible odds, so much had to align, not only across time but within our own bodies, for us to arrive in this moment.
Resilience is what links us: to each other, to our bodies, to the living systems we’re part of. It’s in the way a forest regrows after fire, the way a body finds its balance after disruption, the way seasons move in cycles of loss and renewal. These patterns of disruption and renewal remind us that resilience is always at work, carrying us through and guiding us when we feel most uncertain.
I’ve had to lean on resilience many times in my life. After my son was born, I entered the hardest season I’d ever known. I experienced night sweats, paranoia, feelings of isolation and hopelessness. My digestion was off, my energy was drained, and I no longer felt at home in my own body. I gained eighty pounds and barely recognized the woman I had become.
And yet, even in that collapse, something in me knew it wasn’t the end, but a beginning. With therapeutic support, I started to believe healing was possible, even if I didn’t know the way yet. I became curious about what was happening in my body, and that curiosity led me to the gut, the body’s foundation for balance and repair.
The more I learned about the microbiome, the more I understood how deeply it shapes everything. Our bodies, made up of more microbial than human cells, are designed to restore and regenerate when given the right support. I discovered that microbial diversity is the strongest indicator of a healthy gut. When I began to eat with that in mind, adding fermented foods, more fiber, more variety, I could feel the shift. My energy returned, my body transformed, and I began to feel like myself again.
Over time I came to see that resilience isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about returning to something that was never lost. Remembering the body’s ability to regenerate. Remembering that healing is possible, even when it feels out of reach. Remembering that disruption and renewal are not detours, but the very cycles that shape us and carry us back to ourselves.
Good Bacteria was born from that remembering. What began as my own healing journey grew into a mission to help others reconnect with their microbes and, in doing so, return to themselves, their bodies, and their resilience.
For the past two years, I’ve worked with leading scientists and doctors, alongside Dr. Leigh A. Frame, our chief well-being scientist, to bring this vision to life. Together, we’ve built Good Bacteria with diversity at its foundation, because when we nurture diversity in the gut, we strengthen the body’s natural capacity to adapt, repair, and thrive.
This journal series, Remembering resilience, is an invitation to remember these lessons. To see resilience not as something rare or heroic, but as something alive in you and accessible at any moment. To trust that healing is possible, and to take small steps each day to feed your body, your microbes, and your spirit.
Resilience is about returning: to balance, to strength, to the inherent intelligence that is always in each of us. My hope is that this space reminds you of that truth, and that together we keep finding our way back.