Communication Theory of Resilience: Enacting Adaptive-Transformative Processes When Families Experience Loss and Disruption

The communication theory of resilience grew out of personal experience and/or research on effects of job loss, deindustrialization, chronic illness and disability, death and relationship loss, and military deployment in families. The goals of the communication theory of resilience are to understand and explain how people utilize discursive and material resources to constitute the new normal of their lives after disruption, loss, trauma, and disaster. This chapter offers many examples of how this theory is used in research and in everyday life. Mentoring is applicable across these life contexts and lifespans. Mentoring serves functions of career development, psychosocial support, and role modeling. Moving from the family and community level that often are sites of resilience studies and into policy formation and societal infrastructures would clarify how and why members of some groups have difficulty enacting the five resilience processes