On a muggy morning in Rio Piedras, a San Juan suburb, about three dozen volunteers dressed in parrot green polo shirts are gathered in a brightly lit conference room of El Retiro, a retirement community. The group is mostly women between 60 and 80 years old.
“What is resiliency?” asks Miguel Marrero. He’s a psychologist and mental health program manager for Americares, a relief and development organization. He leads the discussion in his native Spanish. “We’ve been hearing this word over and over since Maria.”
Maria, a deadly Category 4 hurricane, ravaged Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Dominica nearly two years ago, and recovery has been slow. It’s not just Puerto Rico’s infrastructure that was battered. Emotionally, many here are still fragile.
