My friend – a Canadian who had the gall to move back to Canada – asked me, ‘Lizzie, why are you so fixated on this word resilience?’

She was driving through an Ottawa snowstorm, and I was walking my dog in the early morning Canberra dew.

I was not sure how to answer her question. Why was I so focused on the idea of resilience?

I’m a Millennial working mother of two girls. I’ve written previously about the pressure of trying to be an A-grade mum, professional woman, and a supportive tradie wife all at once. It’s tiring.

For the last five years, I feel as if my career has been standing still. Maternity leave (times two) didn’t necessarily set me back, but I certainly didn’t move forward. Until now.

I’ve just landed an exciting new role that I can’t wait to get into, but I find myself worrying, am I resilient enough for a ‘big job’?

Do I have what it takes to withstand everything that is thrown at a busy professional and to be a present mother and wife? Am I resilient enough?

My friend tells me that I am. She tells me that resilience is being able to provide solutions to problems, to navigate difficulties that inevitably arise in business, and to lead a team with empathy, humanity and honesty.

Another friend of mine – a total boss lady in the university sector who I look up to and admire – told me resilience is not about putting up with poor behaviour, it’s about responding to abnormal circumstances in a normal way.

But I’m starting to think resilience – for professional women at least – doesn’t take those meanings anymore.

Being resilient as a woman in the workplace seems to now mean we have to be able to withstand an onslaught of work, bullying, toxicity, and bitchiness, lest we are seen as sooky.

I know I’m not the only one who has noticed, especially since Covid, that workloads have increased. Teams are more thinly stretched. People are edgier. There is more fight in the workplace than I’ve seen in my 19 years in the corporate world.

Maybe it’s going back to how it used to be when my Boomer parents were at the stage of their careers I’m at now. Am I crazy for thinking the business world ought to have evolved since then?

It seems that if you claim to have been bullied, you’re not resilient enough.

If you say your workplace culture is negative or toxic, you’re not resilient enough.

If you crumble under an unrelenting workload, you’re not resilient enough.

If you get upset, disappointed, or despondent about work, you’re not resilient enough.

If you can’t play the power game, you’re not resilient enough.

Resilience seems to have been tainted with what (when I was at school) was called bitchiness.

To be resilient now seems to be about being able to stand up to whatever is thrown at you, swat it away, fight back, and keep going.

Is that healthy? Probably not.

Is that who I am supposed to become over the next few years if I want to continue the trajectory I seem to be on towards CEO? Lord, I hope not.

So yes, I’m fixed on the word resilience because I don’t think I have it in this new sense of its meaning. And I dare say a lot of my colleagues treading this path with me don’t either.

But those who do, are using the word as a weapon.

‘She’s not resilient enough for these kinds of roles.’

What they mean, is she’s not going to handle what we will throw at her without her showing an ounce of emotion, or questioning our motives.

I’m not keen on this new meaning of resilience.

I’m going to start my amazing new job with the kind of resilience my friends see in me. With solutions, empathy, intelligence and a level head. That’s the resilience I’m after.