The Woman’s Resilient Mind
What does resilience really mean for women—and how does it change across a lifetime?
In this episode of HERology, co-hosts Drs. Anna Barbieri, Anu Lala, and Joanne Stone are joined by clinical psychologist Jonathan DePierro, PhD, to explore how women experience resilience through adolescence, pregnancy, parenthood, midlife, and beyond.
Together, they discuss how resilience is shaped not only by hardship, but by social support, purpose, flexibility, and the ability to grow through uncertainty. The conversation also examines the unique pressures women face at different life stages—from body image and social media to fertility, postpartum adjustment, caregiving, perimenopause, and the emotional labor of daily life.
Jon Depierro: If you have a why, you can bear almost any how. So if you have that end result in mind, you can really put up with a whole lot. Um, but I wouldn't have a job or feel hopeful as a psychologist if I didn't think that some of the stuff could be trained and taught as well. I think there is, there's certainly hope and there's, everyone learns all the time.
There's always opportunity to learn new things and learn from other people and other experiences.
Anna Barbieri: Hello, and welcome back to Herology, the Mount Sinai Health System's newest video podcast. I am your co-host, Dr. Anna Barbieri, and today we're talking about resilience, specifically the resilience of women and girls throughout the lifespan. To tackle such a huge topic, I'm joined by our regular co-hosts, Dr.
Joanne Stone and Dr. Anu Lalla, and for some clinical expertise on the role of resilience in our lives, we're joined by Dr. Jonathan DePierro, a clinical psychologist here at the Mount Sinai Hospital. Today's topic is something I've been looking [00:01:00] forward to for actually quite so long, and this is a topic that we talk about a lot off the air together.
Um, so welcome to all of our hosts. Um, you are such experts in this realm, um, and I'm really interested in this topic myself, too. Uh, so the topic today is the woman's resilient mind and resilience in general. We have Dr. Jonathan DePierro with us today, who is a total world expert on this topic. So maybe we'll start with you.