Rooted and Reaching: Building Resilience in Tough Times

There’s something worth paying attention to about a grapevine. For those who know me, I have a small two-hectare block that produces around 11 tons of fruit every year. When I am not in the training room, supervising programmes or writing about practice ideas, I can be found on my tractor.

Grape vines don’t grow in spite of difficulty; they grow because of it. Vignerons have known for centuries that vines planted in rich, easy soil produce weak, watery fruit. It’s the vines pushed through rocky ground, through drought, through cold winters and relentless winds, that dig their roots deepest and produce something worth sharing.

Right now, many of us are feeling the weight of a world that seems increasingly uncertain. Political tensions, both locally and globally, are pulling at the fabric of communities, families, and relationships. Old certainties feel shakier. The noise is loud. And for men who are already working hard to show up differently for their families, that pressure can feel like one more thing pushing against you.

But here’s what the grapevine knows that we sometimes forget: being tested doesn’t mean being broken. Roots grow deeper when they have to search for water. And the strengths you’ve built, often through your hardest seasons, are more real and more durable than you might give yourself credit for.

That’s what resilience actually is. Not the absence of hardship. Not pretending everything’s fine. It’s knowing what you’re made of, and being able to reach for it when things get hard.

Below is an exercise that is useful in assisting users of DFSV to build resilience, particularly through these challenging times.

 

Your Resilience Strategy: A Practical Activity

The following activity helps map out a person’s own strengths and put them to work, especially in moments when the pressure is on, and the stakes feel high at home.

 

Step 1 – What are my strengths?

Every vine has something in it that allows it to survive the season. So do you.

What are your strengths? These might be things others have noticed in you, things you’ve had to rely on in tough moments, or qualities that show up when you’re at your best as a partner, a father, a friend.

If you’re finding it hard to name them, think back to earlier times. What got you through difficult periods? What do the people who know you well see in you? Strengths aren’t always obvious from the inside – sometimes we need to look at the evidence of our own lives to find them.

Facilitators: Prompt the men to be specific. “I’m tough” can become “I keep going even when I feel like giving up.” Help them name it clearly, because a clearly named strength is one they can actually reach for.

 

Step 2 – Times I’ve used my strengths, and how I’ve managed to use them

A grapevine doesn’t just have the potential for fruit, it has a history of producing it. Even in hard years, there are good seasons to look back on.

When have you actually drawn on the strengths you named? How did you manage to use them? What did that look like in practice? Think about moments, big or small, where something in you rose to meet a challenge.

What have you already followed through on? What does that tell you about who you are and what you’re capable of?

Facilitators: This step is about building an evidence base. Men who struggle with self-belief often do so because they’re not in the habit of tracking their own progress. Help them see that the proof is already there — they just haven’t been keeping score.

 

Step 3 – Situations where my strengths will help me get closer to family wellbeing

A vine doesn’t produce fruit in isolation: it produces it in relationship with the soil, the sun, and the people tending it. Your strengths don’t exist for their own sake either.

Where, specifically, can your strengths help you move toward family wellbeing? Think about the situations at home, the moments of tension, the triggers, the times when it would be easy to fall back into old patterns. Consider how your strengths could change the outcome.

This is where facilitators should gently draw connections to previous conversations about situations that have, or could, lead to DFSV. The political stress outside the home has a way of coming through the front door. Naming that honestly, and identifying the strengths that can interrupt it,  is some of the most important work in this step.

Facilitators: Keep this grounded and specific. “My patience” is stronger when it becomes “When the kids are loud and I’m already stressed, I can use my patience by taking five minutes outside before I react.”

 

Step 4 – What will remind me that I have this strength and that I should use it?

Even the strongest vine needs to be trained. Left alone, it grows in every direction and produces very little. The trellis – simple, steady, reliable – gives it structure. It’s the reminder of where the vine is headed.

What will remind you, in the moment when it matters, that you have these strengths and that you can use them? This might be a phrase, an image, a memory, a person’s face.

The world outside may stay noisy for a while. Political tension doesn’t resolve on a convenient schedule. But the man you’re becoming doesn’t depend on the world settling down first. The roots are already there.

Facilitators: Help the men make this reminder concrete and personal. Abstract intentions fade under pressure. A specific, meaningful cue, something tied to their own story, is what holds.

 

A Final Word

Grapevines that have survived the hardest seasons are the ones vintners prize most. Not because the difficulty was good for its own sake, but because difficulty, met with the right roots, produces something remarkable.

Many men are already further along than they might think. We are not asking them to become someone new. It is asking them to see, clearly, who you already are. And to bring that person home.

Published on Wednesday, April 15th, 2026, under What Ken thinks

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