Eilene Zimmerman is a journalist and social worker. She is the author of Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy. For three decades, she has written about business, technology, and social issues for a wide array of national magazines and newspapers. She was a columnist for The New York Times for eight years and, since 2003, has been a regular contributor to the newspaper. In 2017, Eilene went back to school for a master’s degree in social work. In addition to writing, she works part-time as a clinical social worker in San Diego, California. @eilenezwriter

Where were you born and raised? How did it influence your writing and your thinking about the world?
I was born in the Bronx, NYC, and moved to northern New Jersey (bedroom community) when I was in first grade. My family was very middle class, it was the start of the 70s--with all the societal movements of that time, especially the women's movement, a part of my early adolescence. All I wanted from the time I was very young was to be a writer chronicling all of it. When the film All The President's Men came out in 1976 I was 12 years old and a few years later I saw it with some girlfriends from school. I remember my friends all had huge crushes on Robert Redford, but I didn't want to meet him or date him, I wanted to be him--I wanted to be that reporter. I think the political and societal changes happening at the time made me think that writing about it and synthesizing it for others would be a worthwhile and continually fascinating endeavor.

What kind of reader were you as a child? What books made you fall in love with reading as a child?: Like so many other writers I was very bookish as a kid. When I was a pre-teen I was very into Stephen King's books (for a while after reading Salem's Lot I convinced myself my 9 year old sister was a vampire...) and mysteries (the titles of which I can no longer remember). The ones that stayed with me were books like A Wrinkle in Time, Go Ask Alice, Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, that sort of thing. My parents were very unhappily married and we had loads of financial insecurity and books were a free and easy escape from the tension at home. My very first job--at the age of 14--was in the public library around the corner, shelving books. My dream job.

Describe your typical writing day.
When I'm working on a reported story, it's spend setting up interview (PR people, media relations, tracking down sources), writing up questions for interviews and then actually interviewing sources. When it's time to write, I usually spend the most time thinking of my lede--how I'll start things. Then I usually write the first graph or two and then do a rough outline. From there I just use my notes and my research and plough through it. Over the next few days I'll edit and refine what I've got. Right now I'm working on a novel, and if I'm going to write, I start as early as I can (that's when I'm the sharpest) with my coffee and breakfast. I'll read over the chapter I'm working on--so I can kind of get myself up to speed again--and then I start. I find that when I'm working on a book I read aloud as I write, almost unconsciously. I always read the chapter aloud when it's done as it's the best way to see if the language works (and also see errors that need correcting).

Tell us about the creative process behind your most well-known work or your current writing project.
My most well-known work is probably the story I wrote for The New York Times upon which my memoir Smacked is based, and that process was unique because it was almost a cathartic unloading and exploration (of addiction of loved ones) I needed and wanted to do. It was a pleasure to write that, because I needed to do it so badly. For the novel I'm now working on, I find that when I'm starting a new chapter and thinking about these characters I've been living with for a while now, it helps if I get out in nature and take a walk or a hike and just put myself in the character's shoes for a little while, think about what they are going to say, who they'll speak with, what they will do. And then I get home and jot down all those thoughts, and use those notes later to write the chapter.

Do you keep a journal or notebook? If so, what’s in it?
I used to but I don't anymore. I have a little pseudo 'vision board' of sorts on the closet door that faces my desk. It's got quotes that inspire me, photos, tickets stubs, postcards. When I'm feeling a bit down or just burned out, it keeps me going.

How do you research and what role does research play in your writing?
For nonfiction work, research is obviously a part of that. I recently profiled a woman who started a venture capital investing platform for women, and although she gave me plenty of info, I still did a lot of outside research on women and venture capital investing to inform the writing. For the novel, I do research as needed for characters. For instance, one of my characters is a young boy interested in string theory and the multiverse--things in which I'm interested but know almost nothing about. So I've got a stack of library books to read and have watched TED talks, lectures, etc. Although I will actually use only a little of that actual information in the book, I need to know it well enough to write from the character's perspective -- and he knows it very well. It really brings the character to life for me.

Which writer, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?I'd like to have dinner with Nathan Hill. I think he's a brilliant writer. I loved his book Wellness. Or Margaret Atwood, that would be such a joy.

Do you draw inspiration from music, art, or other disciplines?
I listen to moody music when I write, very much in the background, but it can really put me in the moment's mood and help me feel the emotion I'm trying to evoke in words. I also draw inspiration from opera, from wandering around an art museum or a photography exhibition, and from dance -- I love the ballet, just absolutely love it. It reminds me of the incredible beauty we are capable of creating.

AI and technology is changing the ways we write and receive stories. What are your reflections on AI, technology and the future of storytelling? And why is it important that humans remain at the center of the creative process?
It's both awesome and terrifying to me. I recently read a memo from the NYT to its staffers about how to incorporate AI into their process. One of the things suggested was to let AI come up with questions to ask the CEO of a startup. This is something I did hundreds of times for the paper, interviewing CEOs (often founders of startup companies). And I always considered that it was the research I did and my experience and intelligence that allowed me to come up with insightful probing questions. If you're a reporter now and a tech tool can do that for you... then how long until AI just writes the whole thing? What will happen to those kinds of journalists? AI can't go to a battlefield and report from there, sure, but there's a ton of other kinds of journalism it will be able to do. I just read that Meta is training its AI tools on novels (without permission to use them from the authors either). Does that mean that at some point AI will be able to write a novel as good--or perhaps even better--than some of our best novelists? And that begets a whole bunch of other questions about what it means to be a writer, what is literary work and what isn't, etc. In my heart I believe, perhaps naively, that you cannot replace a human being writing about being human. AI may get very very good at imagining this and simulating this, but without a beating heart and a human brain, you cannot write about being human. And novels, memoirs, nonfiction--they all are, in some way, about the experience of being alive and here and living in this world. That's not something AI knows anything about.

Tell us about some books you've recently enjoyed and your favorite books and writers of all time.
A few of my favorite books of all time are Middlemarch, by George Eliot, the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel, The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman, Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Recent favorites are the memoir Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur, The Mighty Red by Louise Erdich, You Are Here by David Nicholls (best writer of dialogue ever) and The Winners by Frederik Bachman.

The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
I think all the arts inform all the other arts -- I can see a photograph that really moves me and it will make me think of something I want a character to say or do, or it might give me the idea for a story to pitch. Same with paintings, sculpture, a good play. Also just seeing the ways other people express themselves or tell their stories is wildly inspiring. I recently saw a musical, The Three Summers of Lincoln, and it was such an unusual story and one I didn't know about --the friendship during the Civl War between Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. And just seeing how the author of this was able to put that story to music (powerfully) was motivating to my own process. I think people think a writer can just go into a room and sit in front of a computer (or writing pad or typewriter) and write, but in my humble opinion, creativity begs creativity. I need to live in the world of art and culture and learn about other people's creative processes in order to be more creative and adventurous with the art I make. It's inspiring.

Interviewed by Mia Funk

What Makes Some People More Resilient Than Others
The very earliest days of our lives, and our closest relationships, can offer clues about how we cope with adversity.

By Eilene Zimmerman
Published June 18, 2020 Updated June 21, 2020, The New York Times

This article is part of a series on resilience in troubled times — what we can learn about it from history and personal experiences.

A few years ago, an unimaginable thing happened in my life. I wanted to help someone I cared about, someone who was sick with an illness he was hiding. I went to his house, intent on a rescue operation that would end, I thought, with a trip to the emergency room. Instead, it ended with a trip to the morgue. What I found when I arrived was my ex-husband, dead on his bathroom floor . The hidden illness? An intravenous drug addiction.

It was, without question, the most traumatic event of my life, but not only mine. I had two teenage children at the time, who had unknowingly been given a front-row seat to their father’s slow suicide. It took two years for me to settle my ex- husband’s estate, which was thrown into probate, and meant a kind of suspended traumatic animation for me, as I continued to live in what felt like a constant state of emergency.

Back then, I thought we would never really recover , that our lives would always be stained with this terrible sadness. But now, nearly five years later , we’re doing well — really well. Or we were, until recently, when along with the rest of the world we began living through the current convergence of crises. It turns out that awful time in my life was good training for a pandemic, for political and social upheaval, for economic and financial uncertainty. The experience taught me that I never really know what’s going to happen next. I plan as best I can, but now I’m far more able to pivot my thinking. I have the capacity to cope with more of life’s unexpected slings and arrows, to accept the difficulties I face and keep going, even though it can be hard.

How we navigate a crisis or traumatic event (and the coronavirus has many characteristics of trauma because it is unpredictable and uncontrollable) depends, in large part, on how resilient we are. Resilience is the ability to recover from difficult experiences and setbacks, to adapt, move forward and sometimes even experience growth.

An individual’s resilience is dictated by a combination of genetics, personal history, environment and situational context. So far , research has found the genetic part to be relatively small.

“The way I think about it is that there are temperamental or personality characteristics that are genetically influenced, like risk-taking, or whether you’re an introvert or extrovert,” said Karestan Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Professor Koenen studies how genes shape our risk of post-traumatic stress

disorder .

“We all know people that are just very even-tempered,” she said. “Some of that is simply how we’re built physiologically.” Yet it isn’t true that some people are born more resilient than others, said Professor Koenen, “That’s because almost any trait can be a positive or negative, depending on the situation.”

Far more important, it seems, is an individual’s history.

The most significant determinant of resilience — noted in nearly every review or study of resilience in the last 50 years — is the quality of our close personal relationships, especially with parents and primary caregivers. Early attachments to parents play a crucial, lifelong role in human adaptation.

“How loved you felt as a child is a great predictor of how you manage all kinds of difficult situations later in life,” said Bessel van der Kolk, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine who has been researching post-traumatic stress since the 1970s. He is the founder of the Trauma Research Foundation in Boston.

Dr . van der Kolk said long-term studies showed that the first 20 years of life were especially critical. “Different traumas at different ages have their own impacts on our perceptions, interpretations and expectations; these early experiences sculpt the brain, because it is a use-dependent organ,” he said.

You can think of resilience as a set of skills that can be, and often is, learned. Part of the skill-building comes from exposure to very difficult — but manageable — experiences, like the one my children and I had.

“Stress isn’t all bad,” said Steven M. Southwick, professor emeritus of psychiatry, PTSD and Resilience at Yale University School of Medicine and co-author of the book “Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges.” If you can cope today with all that’s happening in the world around you, Dr . Southwick said, “then when you are on the other side of it, you’ll be stronger.”

How we cope depends on what is in our resilience toolbox. For some people, like

my ex-husband, the toolbox is filled with drugs. For others it can be drinking,

overeating, gambling, shopping. But these don’t promote resilience.

Instead, the tools common to resilient people are optimism (that is also realistic), a moral compass, religious or spiritual beliefs, cognitive and emotional flexibility, and social connectedness. The most resilient among us are people who generally don’t dwell on the negative, who look for opportunities that might exist even in the darkest times. During a quarantine, for example, a resilient person might decide it is a good time to start a meditation practice, take an online course or learn to play guitar .

Research has shown that dedication to a worthy cause or a belief in something greater than oneself — religiously or spiritually — has a resilience-enhancing effect, as does the ability to be flexible in your thinking.

“Many, many resilient people learn to carefully accept what they can’t change about a situation and then ask themselves what they can actually change,” 

Dr. Southwick said. Conversely, banging your head against the wall and fretting endlessly about not being able to change things has the opposite effect, lessening your ability to cope. Dr . Southwick has done many studies with former prisoners of war and has found that although they suffered profoundly, many eventually found new areas of growth and meaning in their lives. This happened to me, too. After my own tragic experience, I headed back to school for a master’s degree in social work.

But when I was still in the thick of it, five years ago, I felt overwhelmed and hopeless, weighed down by worries. The way I got through that was to narrow my thinking. Instead of worrying about what life would be like next week or month or year — How long would it take to get through probate? Would my daughter be able to go back to college? If I had gone to my ex-husband’s house a day earlier, could I have saved him? — I worked hard to stay focused on the here and now and not give in to ruminations about the past or the future, which I couldn’t change or control. In my fieldwork now as a social work student, I provide support for people who have cancer — also a traumatic experience — and I often counsel them to stay grounded in the present moment and focus on their strengths, because imagining every worst-case scenario is pointless and only increases anxiety.

“Each of us has to figure out what our particular challenges are and then determine how to get through them, at the current moment in time,” advised George Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology and director of the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Columbia University Teachers College. The good news, he said, is that most of us will. Professor Bonanno’s lab reviewed 67 studies of people who experienced all kinds of traumatic events. “I’m talking massshootings, hurricanes, spinal cord injuries, things like that,” he said.

“And two-thirds were found to be resilient. Two-thirds were able to function very well in a short period of time.”

How to Build Resilience

Interviews with large numbers of highly resilient individuals — those who have experienced a great deal of adversity and have come through it successfully — show they share the following characteristics.

• They have a positive, realistic outlook. They don’t dwell on negative information and instead look for opportunities in bleak situations, striving to find the positive within the negative.

• They have a moral compass. Highly resilient people have a solid sense of what they consider right and wrong, and it tends to guide their decisions.

• They have a belief in something greater than themselves. This is often found through religious or spiritual practices. The community support that comes from being part of a religion also enhances resilience.

• They are altruistic; they have a concern for others and a degree of selflessness.

• They are often dedicated to causes they find meaningful and that give them a sense of purpose.

• They accept what they cannot change and focus energy on what they can change. Dr . Southwick says resilient people reappraise a difficult situation and look for meaningful opportunities within it.

• They have a mission, a meaning, a purpose. Feeling committed to a meaningful mission in life gives them courage and strength.

• They have a social support system, and they support others. “Very few resilient people,” said Dr . Southwick,“go it alone.