Own Your Resilience (An Army Leader and War Widow Shares Tools to Live with Courage and Joy)

An Army veteran and professional life coach's battle plan for overcoming challenges and leading a joyful life.

Jennifer Ballou is one of the only known US military service members to lose her husband while serving simultaneously in the same war zone. Just after Father’s Day in 2010, Staff Sergeant Edwardo Loredo was killed in action in Afghanistan, leaving behind his wife and their infant son, as well as a step daughter and a daughter from a previous marriage.

After returning from Afghanistan and laying Eddie to rest, while still serving, Jen centered her life on caring for her children while also opening herself to the wisdom, support, and hard-earned guidance of those around her. What she could not yet see was that this instinct to listen, help, and improve systems was quietly shaping something larger. Those early choices helped lay the foundation for what would become the US Army’s Master Resilience Training program. By the time Jen was asked to lead resilience efforts for service members, families, and civilians at Fort Bragg and later at the Pentagon, she had already put the principles into practice in her own life, proving that resilience is not theoretical, but lived.

Own Your Resilience isn’t just Jen’s story of surviving and thriving after her husband’s battlefield death; it offers an actionable plan for anyone navigating profound loss, life-altering challenges, or unexpected change and seeking a life filled with purpose and joy.