Resilience: General Rhonda Cornum

Challenge Your Thinking with Dr. Linda Tucker

Brigadier General, Dr. Rhonda Cornum is tough and gentle. I find the two are often a package deal. In today's interview with Brigadier General and Physician Rhonda Cornum, we will learn that resilience can be taught, learned and even mastered. However, here is the best part...whether you are a civilian or in the military or even feel like the walking wounded today’s episode is for you. After surviving a helicopter crash while on a rescue mission during the first Iraq war General Cornum was then taken prisoner. if that isn’t a petri dish to test one’s resilience, I don’t know what is. Gen. Cornum is well acquainted with the double-edged sword of hardship, but as you will soon learn, she is also adamant about not being defined by those experiences... except in terms of lessons learned. When Dr. Cornum returned back to the States after being rescued, people were often confused when she would explain that instead of experiencing PTSD, she felt stronger because of her experience. As Dr. Michaela Haas notes in her book Bouncing Forward, in the early 1990s, the term “post traumatic growth” had not yet been discovered. Instead of blindly accepting what some consider constricting labels that trauma survivors are given, Dr. Cornum focused on re-claiming the agency over what she could control. Before she retired from the military, Dr. Cornum developed the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program, which not only helps boost resilience in troops, but can help all of us in everyday life. Rhonda’s story is a reminder that the human spirit is capable of surmounting unimaginable challenges, and that if anything, living through a near-death situation can make life that much more precious and cherished.