Building Emotional Resilience: Mitzi Semo

When I was a young mother, our oldest son was a year old, I received a call when I was at work from my husband’s work. And they said, “Your husband has been hurt pretty badly. We need you to get to the hospital right away.” And I remember getting in the car and trying to start it but realizing that I was shaking so bad. I was much more worried than I thought I was. And I sat there, and I just had to say a prayer. Then I had this overwhelming feeling of peace and warmth, and I knew that everything was going to be okay. So, when I got to the hospital and the doctor told me, “We don’t know if your husband’s going to make it through this.” I remember the feeling that I had gotten in the car, and it wasn’t as if the Lord was telling me, “Don’t worry, your husband is going to be healthy like he was before,” but I still knew I was going to be okay and we were going to be okay no matter what the outcome was.

And when I think of being resilient emotionally, I think of the peace that the Savior gives you and helps you feel. Regardless of the outcome and regardless of the situation at hand, you know that He is there and He will help you through it all. And that’s how I felt throughout that whole ordeal. And it wasn’t easy. We went through a year of lots of hard things, both physically and spiritually, but we got through that and we learned a lot.

I would say that not all of us are, again, are going to have the same experiences in life. But I do know that for me, at that time, I needed to turn to the Lord and have a relationship with Him. And by doing that, I felt as though I could actually get through this. And then my emotional resilience was built on the foundation of the gospel and the foundation of Jesus Christ. So, any time in the future when anything else happened, I remembered that.

And I would have to also say that every Sunday when I take the sacrament, when it says to remember the Savior, I remember the experiences that I had with Him. And that has also built my emotional resilience, because that memory helps me understand who I am as a child of God and that I have a purpose here and that I am here to help Him build His kingdom. And so, however good or bad our futures will, you know, come out to be, I just know that I will have and always turn to the Savior. And I have trust in that relationship, and that’s where my emotional resilience comes from.