The Cost of Showing Up: Emotional Resilience
No one really prepares you for what it takes to stay in this industry. Not just physically. Emotionally.
On paper, it looks manageable, the long hours, the travel, the unpredictable schedules. You sign up for that. You expect it. What no one quite explains is the trade you’re making. Because alongside everything you miss, there’s also what you get. The adrenaline. The rush. The deep, immediate human connection that happens when you’re surrounded by people who speak the same language, chasing the same outcome. The feeling of locking in with a crew, moving as one, building something bigger than yourself. That moment when the lights go down, the crowd erupts, and for a split second everything makes sense. It’s electric. It’s intoxicating. And it bonds you in a way that’s hard to replicate anywhere else.
That’s the hook.
It feels a lot like love.
It feels a lot like love. Or maybe more honestly, like a relationship that runs hot and fast, fueled by intensity, purpose, and belonging. You love the work. It loves you back, in its own way. But it’s also emotionally taxing. It demands priority. And over time, you learn which feelings to lean into so you can keep going, and which ones you quietly push aside. Most often, it’s the gig that wins. Because that’s what you’re trained to do. That’s what’s rewarded. That’s what keeps the machine moving.
And while you’re in it, fully immersed, surrounded by people who get it, it’s easy not to notice what’s slipping by elsewhere.
The moments that don’t reschedule. The celebrations that happen without you. The quiet realizations that life kept going while you were doing your job somewhere else. Birthdays. Weddings. Funerals. Public holidays. Family dinners. Milestones you meant to be there for but weren’t. Not because you didn’t care, but because you couldn’t be in two places at once.
That’s the part people outside the industry don’t always understand.
And sometimes, if we’re honest, it’s the part we don’t fully let ourselves feel either. We tell ourselves it’s the price of the work. That we’ll make it up later. That missing one thing doesn’t mean missing everything. And maybe that’s true for a while. But over time, those absences add up. And the same intensity that makes this work feel alive can also make it hard to step away long enough to notice what it’s costing you.
Emotional resilience in this industry isn’t about being tough enough to ignore the loss.
Emotional resilience in this industry isn’t about being tough enough to ignore the loss. It’s about learning how to carry it without letting it hollow you out. Resilience isn’t numbness. It’s flexibility. It’s the ability to bend without breaking, to grieve what you miss while still finding joy in what’s in front of you. And that takes practice. Because when you miss enough important moments, you start to feel unmoored. Holidays blur together. Birthdays become FaceTime calls from loading docks. Celebrations lose their shape. You can start to feel like you’re living adjacent to your own life, participating from the sidelines.
If you don’t intentionally build emotional anchors, the work becomes the only thing holding you steady. And when the work stops, even briefly, you’re left drifting. That’s where burnout creeps in. Not all at once. Quietly. The irony is, we already understand this better than most people. In this industry, we survive chaos through systems. When something goes wrong during a show, it’s urgent. Extremely urgent. But we don’t panic, we rely on the foundation we’ve built. We go through the steps. Muscle memory kicks in. The system removes layers of thinking so we can stay grounded, focused, and effective under pressure. Emotional resilience works the same way. Consistency isn’t about control; it’s about creating internal systems that hold you steady when everything else is moving. When chaos hits, you don’t have to figure out who you are or how to cope in the moment. You trust the process you’ve already put in place.
So what does emotional resilience actually look like in this world?
It starts with acknowledging that missing things hurts. Even when you chose the job. Even when you love it. Even when you’re grateful. Loss doesn’t disappear just because it was expected. One of the most important skills you can develop is naming what you’re missing instead of minimizing it. Saying, “I’m sad I missed that,” without following it with, “But it’s fine.” Because sometimes it’s not fine, and that doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice.
Once you name it, you can begin to replace, not replicate, the moments you miss.
You can’t recreate a wedding or a holiday dinner, but you can create alternate anchors, rituals, and touchstones that give your life rhythm and meaning regardless of the calendar.
Here are a few ways people in the industry do that, intentionally and sustainably.
Create parallel celebrations.
If you miss birthdays, create your own version. A standing dinner when you’re home. A ritual phone call. A tradition that exists outside the official date. What matters isn’t the day, it’s the consistency.Anchor your weeks, not your years.
Big holidays can be hard to rely on when your schedule shifts constantly. Weekly anchors, like a Sunday check-in with family, a midweek ritual, or a recurring call, create stability even when long-term planning feels impossible.Build meaning into ordinary days.
When you miss enough “big moments,” you learn that happiness can’t live only in the highlights. Resilient people learn how to find grounding in quiet routines: morning coffee rituals, movement, journaling, a familiar playlist, a walk in a new city. These things sound small, but they accumulate.Let yourself grieve missed moments.
You don’t need to dwell, but you do need to acknowledge. Five minutes of honesty beats months of unprocessed resentment. Write it down. Talk it out. Let it pass through instead of packing it away.Stay connected in real time, not just retrospectively.
Instead of catching up after the fact, find ways to stay present while you’re gone. Voice notes. Short check-ins. Sharing mundane details, not just highlights. Presence isn’t measured by length, it’s measured by consistency.Redefine what “a good life” looks like.
If your definition of happiness depends on being present for every milestone, this industry will eventually break your heart. Resilience comes from widening the definition, allowing joy to exist in imperfect, unconventional ways.
Another key piece of emotional resilience is boundaries, especially with yourself.
It’s easy to say yes to everything because opportunities feel scarce. But constantly overextending leaves no room to recover emotionally. Sustainable participation means recognizing when to step back, when to pass on a run, and when to choose rest over momentum.
Resilience also means allowing yourself to be changed by the work, without losing yourself to it.
The industry sharpens certain skills: adaptability, empathy, and crisis management. But it can also dull others if you’re not careful, like presence, vulnerability, and patience. You have to practice those intentionally. The people who last in this industry aren’t the ones who never feel the loss. They’re the ones who learn how to metabolize it. Who build systems, internal and external, that support them through the constant goodbyes.
It’s okay to want more than the job.
It’s okay to want stability and movement.
It’s okay to want joy that isn’t tied to a schedule.
Emotional resilience isn’t about choosing between the life you have and the life you want.
You will miss things. That’s part of the deal. But missing moments doesn’t mean missing out on life, not if you build anchors that travel with you. The goal isn’t to harden yourself against loss. It’s to stay soft enough to feel joy anyway. And that, more than toughness, more than endurance, is what keeps people whole in the long run.
Learn more about Nicholas’s work at TheNickStrand.com and ChooseY
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Editor's Note: At StageLync, an international platform for the performing arts, we celebrate the diversity of our writers' backgrounds. We recognize and support their choice to use either American or British English in their articles, respecting their individual preferences and origins. This policy allows us to embrace a wide range of linguistic expressions, enriching our content and reflecting the global nature of our community.
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