How to Build Resilience When You're Ready to Give Up with Laura BrattonHow to Build Resilience When You're Ready to Give Up with Laura Bratton
Retrieving Sanity
Keegan and Laura Bratton talk about grit, gratitude and how to stay resilient through blindness, addiction recovery and major life changes. The conversation focuses on honest emotion, tiny moments of gratitude, and building self-worth that doesn’t depend on anyone else’s approval.
49:23•20 Apr 2026
Grit, Gratitude and Not Giving Up: Laura Bratton on Resilience and Self-Love
Episode Overview
- Gratitude is not about liking your hardship but noticing small, genuine supports within it, even if that’s just surviving the day.
- You can be both frustrated and grateful at the same time; denying either feeling creates more emotional pain.
- Turning towards anxiety and difficult emotions, rather than fighting them, can make their intensity fade.
- True grit includes acknowledging pain, taking breaks, and practising self-compassion, not just pushing through at all costs.
- Identity is more stable when based on self-love and inner perception, rather than other people’s labels or expectations.
“"Don't try to fake yourself into gratitude. Acknowledge what is that one thing just in one breath you can be grateful for."”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety and beyond? Retrieving Sanity brings that question centre stage as Keegan chats with returning guest Laura Bratton about building resilience when life feels impossible. Laura shares her story of losing her sight as a teenager and how a throwaway challenge from a mentor led her into a daily practice of what she calls "grit and gratitude". She’s clear that gratitude isn’t about pretending everything’s fine or being thankful for suffering.
Instead, it’s about spotting small, real moments of support: "It's not being grateful for the adversity... It's gratitude in the midst of whatever we're going through in life." For anyone in addiction recovery, mental health struggle, or a big life transition, this conversation lands on very familiar ground. Laura talks about how, in utter despair, gratitude sometimes shrinks to "I survived the day" or "I'm grateful my head is hitting the pillow".
She stresses that you don’t fake it, and you don’t use gratitude to plaster over pain – you let both frustration and thankfulness exist together. You’ll hear how her guide dog didn’t just help her cross the street, but quietly helped rebuild her identity and confidence. There’s a powerful thread on learning self-compassion, shifting from stubbornness to true resilience, and how embracing difficult emotions can make panic and anxiety lose their grip.
Keegan links Laura’s ideas to addiction recovery – those moments where surviving the next two minutes feels like a miracle – and together they unpack why rest is productive, why hustle culture burns people out, and why your identity can’t safely rest on other people’s labels.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re failing because you’re tired, discouraged, or stuck, this chat might leave you asking: what if taking a breath, naming one tiny gratitude, and admitting your pain is exactly the kind of strength you’ve been missing?
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