Growing Through Difficult Times

Mitch Arnold • October 19, 2025

A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself smiling and nodding, as my eyes welled up with tears of sadness. I was among friends I hadn’t seen for a long time, and I had a beer and a Philly cheesesteak in front of me, yet I was engrossed in stories of incomprehensible agony and triumph. It was a powerful juxtaposition, the kind you don’t easily forget.


Lynda and I were at a charity event that we attend almost every year. The event is called Glow Gold, and its intent is to raise money for childhood cancer research. It’s one of many events held by Sammy’s Superheroes, an organization founded by one of my former students whose son Sammy is the namesake.


For most of the event, the mood was joyful, with music playing and children running around in bounce houses and having their faces painted, while adults enjoyed conversation, music, and good food and drink. The vibes were so casual that it was easy to forget the purpose behind the event, until the speakers took the stage.


These brave souls are typically parents, and they are there to share their stories of going through a cancer battle with their children. As a parent, and now grandparent, I don’t even want to think about childhood cancer and what these families have experienced. I imagine that the speakers felt the same way, and would rather be sitting in the crowd with me, and not reliving their pain in front of strangers. Yet, there they were.


The first speaker was a young father with several children who only briefly attended the event, as he was busy with his children’s activities that night. He reminded me of myself several years ago, when I was busy with my own young children, except that I didn’t have a four-year-old in a fight for his life, a fight that had already cost him one of his legs.


Next on stage was a mother who had struggled to have children, only to have her two-year-old die in her arms as she sat outside with him on a sunny summer morning. Her description of the experience was so vivid that it was easy to imagine – too easy for an empath like me. While both stories were sad and incredibly heart-wrenching, they were also oddly uplifting. Both parents spoke of how their children inspired them to become better people. They shared how their experiences, though they wished that they hadn’t had them, enhanced their appreciation of life, love and family. They no longer take time for granted, and they’ve learned that the trivial things that challenge us really aren’t that important. They have managed to grow, despite suffering from trauma that few of us will ever experience.


These families are prime examples of something I have recently begun studying, Post-Traumatic Growth. Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) is a theory, developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, that suggests that not all reactions to trauma are negative. In fact, they conclude that mild to moderate trauma often leads to positive psychological changes, such as stronger resilience, heightened empathy, renewed appreciation for life and more meaningful relationships. PTG epitomizes the human spirit, and seeing that in these parents had me smiling and nodding.


No one wants to experience trauma, yet despite our best efforts to avoid it, trauma can still find us and impart devastating effects, some of which we may never recover from. Still, like these parents who have experienced the unthinkable, we can come out on the other side as better people. PTG gives us hope that this is possible.



Focused on the social aspect of the event, I hadn’t readied myself for the emotional labyrinth that my mind was suddenly navigating while listening to speakers that Saturday night. The smiles and nodding happened, when my thoughts finally caught up with my emotions. Even through the most trying times, we can grow and improve, if we’re receptive to the learning that challenges can provide. 

Attitude Makes All of the Difference

By Mitch Arnold • March 15, 2026
About six months ago, I received a letter from a clinic telling me that my five years were up, and it was time for me to call to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. Because that procedure and the preparation for it are awfully unpleasant, I didn’t respond to the letter until last week. If you’ve ever experienced a colonoscopy, perhaps you can forgive my procrastination. After five minutes on hold, I was ready to give up on the call, maybe take it as a sign to buy more time, but Lynda sat near me, looking at me with eyes that said further procrastination would be most unwelcome. At last, a very pleasant voice greeted me on the other end of the line. I joked with her that she was WAY more enthusiastic about the call than I was. She laughed and assured me that she understood my hesitation, but that she was going to make it as easy as possible. Her job was to field reluctant calls from unenthusiastic patients, and then to ask them questions about their bowel movements. For veterans of the procedure like me, she breezed over the details of the preparation that consists of clearing your system with a barrage of intestinal stimulants, and then ended the call with reassurance that it won’t be that bad, and that having the procedure is the responsible thing to do. When I hung up the phone, I thought about how the appointment maker’s attitude made the experience better for both of us. Had she matched my level of enthusiasm and negativity, we probably still would have accomplished the required task, but we would have done so in a way that didn’t reflect our humanity. Then, I thought about how that call was a reminder of how warmth and empathy bring peace to those lucky enough to be around them. The receptionist’s job was to have conversations with people who didn’t want to talk to her and to ask them awkward questions about something as off-putting as their digestive tendencies. That’s certainly a lot to overcome, but she did it like a professional. By the time I hung up the phone, I could feel stress and tension leaving my body. We have many opportunities to do the same thing – not to ask people uncomfortable questions about bodily functions, but to lighten our tone and use empathy to make others more comfortable and bring peace to the world around us. When we encounter people obviously having a rough day, we should be sensitive to their fragility and treat them as we would want to be treated. Even when the bad day isn’t obvious, a little extra warmth and empathy is worth the effort and usually improves our days too. I know this, because I’m often blessed to be on the receiving end of these transactions. Because of my obvious disability, most people soften when meeting me. Even those who I see frequently, like people at the gym, go out of their way to be kind and helpful to me. Of course, I reciprocate, and after a while, it’s just the way that we interact with each other.  That’s a good way to live, and the colonoscopy scheduler reminded me of that. Though I had never met her, I could tell that she cared enough about me as a patient to extend the extra effort of humanity. Think about a world where we all do that every time we interact with each other.

People Think We Shouldn’t Be Friends

By Mitch Arnold • February 15, 2026
Most of my closest friendships go back decades, and they are with people who are a lot like me. Because we grew up in similar environments and share similar backgrounds, my friends and I also share fairly consistent perspectives on the world and current issues. If we differ, it’s usually only slightly. Vernon was a notable exception. Vernon came from a much different background than I, and that made his perspective unique and valuable to me. Despite our differences, we learned over the decades that we had more in common than we could have imagined. I met Vernon in the late 1990s, when I was working in public relations at a historically black university (HBCU), North Carolina A&T State University. He was 15 years older than me, and a consummate professional, not to mention, a snappy dresser. He was always in a suit, and took his work in research administration very seriously. Initially, he intimidated me and I amused him. Not many people on campus looked like me. Fewer came from a background like mine. As a white guy who grew up in the rural Midwest and whose previous job was teaching at a Catholic school in Nebraska, I was very much a minority. Additionally, I was a Republican, and there weren’t many of those around either. I thought of Vernon during the noise surrounding this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. If we still worked down the hallway from each other, one of us surely would have stopped by the other’s office to share perspectives and try to make sense of the controversy. That conversation would have ended, like they all did, with some good-natured humor and a laugh. Decades have passed since Vernon and I worked together. In that time, I moved back to Nebraska and Vernon eventually retired. Still, we kept in touch with phone calls at least once per year. “It’s your white Republican friend from Nebraska” is how those calls usually started. He would follow by asking me again where Nebraska is, and what I thought of the current political landscape. Though clearly incongruent politically, never did we argue or take up sides against each offer. Mostly what we learned from each other is that we weren’t all that different and that often what we assumed wasn’t always the case. Vernon was very much a capitalist and more socially conservative than most Republicans, including me. Jokingly, I once accused him of being a Republican, because a lot of what he said didn’t fit my narrative of a Democrat. Likewise, he was surprised when I told him that I wasn’t a fervent supporter of President Trump. “You’re a unique man,” he said. I told him that I really wasn’t. Like most people on both sides, I valued many of the things he did, like strong family values and a strong economy. We just differed on the role that government should play on those issues. In one particularly poignant exchange, Vernon said, “People would look at us and think that we shouldn’t be friends.” Initially, his comment made me sad; however, I stepped back and thought about it further. In a world that seems intent on separating and categorizing people, it’s important that we remain friends and prioritize our similarities over our differences. I would have enjoyed a conversation with Vernon about the Super Bowl Halftime Show controversy, and imagine that he would have told me that he didn’t watch either show, but I didn’t get that opportunity. Vernon passed away in his sleep last spring. Even though he’s gone, his voice will never leave me. When I see efforts to divide our great nation into sides, I’ll always think of Vernon and strive to have friendships like the one I had with him, even when people think that we shouldn’t be friends.