BUOYANT
A science-backed and story-driven guide for staying afloat amid personal storms and the collective chaos of our world.
Welcome!
Thank you for visiting. Please take the resilience quiz, read excerpts from BUOYANT, and consider preordering. I hope its stories will inspire you and the practical advice and exercises will help you navigate whatever challenges life hurls your way.
Explore the Book
If you've been shattered by grief, weighed down by loss, or overwhelmed by life's challenges, you're not alone. Adversity is part of the human experience, but resilience is what helps us heal, adapt, and move forward. What matters most isn't what happens to us, but how we rise after the fall. This is buoyancy.
BUOYANT blends psychology, neuroscience, timeless wisdom, poetry, storytelling, and practical Buoyancy Boosters to show that resilience isn’t a trait we're born with. It’s a skill we can cultivate at any age.
Through my own journey and more than twenty inspiring stories of transformation, this book offers practical tools, scientific insights, reflective exercises, and moments of inspiration to help readers navigate grief, recover from setbacks, quiet negative self-talk, embrace forgiveness, rediscover purpose, and strengthen connection.
Hope-filled, compassionate, and grounded in research, BUOYANT is a roadmap for healing, growth, and finding meaning in the midst of life's storms.
Praise for BUOYANT
“Gina Vild offers a roadmap for navigating not only the personal traumas and setbacks we all eventually face, but also the collective political and social tumult we are enduring in the current time. Here is practical guidance from Vild's own "cornucopia of hard-won wisdom." Each chapter is like a fitness class for strengthening not only our inner core, but the muscle of resilience that keeps us buoyant even in troubled times.”
—Judith Valente, author of The Italian Soul: How to Savor the Full Joys of Life; How to Be a Contemplative; How to Be; and How to Live
“In BUOYANT, Gina Vild brings the clarity of a wise friend to life’s hardest moments. Blending riveting stories with science-backed practices, she reveals a path through the turbulence of our times and the challenges of our own lives. Relatable and clear-eyed, BUOYANT shows you how to thrive even in the face of what cannot be fixed.”
—Manju Sheth, MD, President, Women Who Win global media platform
“In BUOYANT, Gina Vild bridges the science of resilience with the art of living well. Grounded in research yet deeply human, this book offers a compassionate and evidence-based guide to navigating loss and rediscovering joy. Through personal stories, poetry, and practical exercises, Vild reminds us that even amid life’s chaos, we possess the capacity to endure and to rise, renew, and thrive.”
—William Haseltine, PhD, scientist, philanthropist, and author of My Lifelong Fight Against Disease
Authored by Gina Vild
Meet Gina
Gina Vild inspires people to lead more resilient, joyful lives by blending scientific research, timeless wisdom, and hard-won personal experience. She is the author of BUOYANT: The Art and Science of a Resilient Life (December 2026) and co-author of The Two Most Important Days: How to Find Your Purpose and Live a Happier, Healthier Life. Through her two Psychology Today columns — A Buoyant Life and Your Life's Purpose — she offers tools that spur resilience, personal growth, and a purpose-driven life.
Most recently she led external relations and communications at Harvard Medical School and has held leadership positions at other distinguished centers for academic medicine. Gina serves on boards advancing women's empowerment and AI-driven innovation in healthcare. She leads the Resilience Group for The 333 Collective, a group dedicated to women’s empowerment. She lives in the Boston area.
A Poem from the Book
Gathering Light For Winter
–Jeanette Encinias
When you have no words for the woundswhen your body is as hollowed out and darkas a jack-o-lanternin Novemberwhen you have lost your north, your south,your east and your weststay still.Words for the pain are formingbeneath the skin of your patience.Your body is gathering light for winter.Your compass is emerging through water.Sometimes dying is the only way to live again.It may take all your stories away.It may hunt and kill your prideso you are left with nothingbut questions and spacehowling into the nightwhat next? what now? what for?This is when gracepours her warm milkinto your woundsand advises you to rest.To steal the secrets of sorrowand learn her heavy songso that you can become an instrumentof resilience, turning ever forwardwith more than you were born with.