Enduring as Lived Experience: Exploring the Essence of Spiritual Resilience for Women in Late Life
Open accessAbstract
The purpose of this study was to explore spirituality and its relationship to resilience for women in late life. Over thirty interviews with six women aged 80 and older provide a dataset allowing for the phenomenological investigation of spiritual resilience. Themes emerged illustrating the components of spiritual resilience. The components of spiritual resilience are having divine support, maintaining purpose, and expressing gratitude. These factors are essential to the women's resilience and act as mechanisms that promote high levels of subjective well-being and an overall good quality of life. Essentially, participants articulate how their experiences of enduring hardships are informed by spiritual resilience.
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Spirituality serves as a factor that guides people through life challenges and functions as a pathway to resilience and maintaining well-being.
“Spirituality seems to serve as a factor that guides people through life challenges and functions as a pathway to resilience and maintaining well-being (Manning, 2014).”
From The relationship between spirituality and resilience and well-being: a study of 529 care leavers from 11 nations. (2023) · cites this paper as Manning, 2014
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- Authors
- Manning, L. K.
- Affiliations
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Manning, Lydia K.
- ORCID
- Manning, Lydia K.
- Venue
- Journal of Religion and Health
- Published
- 2012-08-07
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 352-362
- ISSN
- 0022-4197 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-6571
- PMC
- PMC3652895
- OpenAlex
- W2105433048
- Cited by
- 50
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 1.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Journal of Religion and Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (5 T32 AG00029-35, T32AG000029)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Resilience and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Demography › Workplace Spirituality and Leadership
- Keywords
- spiritual resilience, spirituality, older women, old age, subjective well-being, quality of life, divine support, purpose, gratitude, lived experience, aging
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Emotions, Female, Humans, Interviews as Topic, Quality of Life, Religion and Psychology, Midwestern United States, Spirituality, Resilience, Psychological
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