March 1, 2026
By Michelle Madden
Photographs by ABC/HEIDI GUTMAN
Some people have an aura of ease, a gentle calm that makes you exhale and feel safe, as though you are being tenderly held in the palm of their hand. When you are with Tara Narula, MD, you not only sense that she is an exceptional doctor, but that she has a highly evolved soul. It seems fitting, then, that she would write a book called The Healing Power of Resilience (Simon&Schuster).
Narula is a renowned cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital and ABC News chief medical correspondent. She has a home in Roxbury and comes there with her husband, David, every weekend to unwind, and give their two daughters and golden retriever puppy a place to run. They were introduced to the area by David’s brother, Ryan Cangello, the owner of the beloved Owl Wine & Food Bar in New Preston.
Narula was driven to write her book based on a clear pattern she’d observed among her patients. In the face of a medical diagnosis, some were able to weather their situation and even thrive, while others were not. What accounted for this difference? Resilience—the ability to adapt to change.
This trait was embodied by Narula’s own father—an immigrant, with $50 in his pocket when he arrived, eventually becoming one of the founders of cardiac electrophysiology. She was guided through her life by a message imparted by him: “There is nothing that happens that you can not overcome.” Narula grew up accompanying her father on rounds, and fell in love with medicine, thinking that one day she would become a cardiac surgeon.
The path, however, to becoming a doctor was circuitous and bumpy. Before following her heart, she followed her degree (economics from Stanford) and opened a smoothie shop in Miami. But smoothies never soothed the yearning to heal. Eventually in medical school, her own resilience was tested when she became the patient and went through years of uncertainty as she lost partial vision in her right eye. To give her strength, her mother sent her the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It became a powerful force in her healing, and taught her the lesson of acceptance, a key ingredient of resilience.
Throughout her career, Narula has realized that resilience is woefully overlooked. Doctors are not taught to consider the physiological toll that stress can have on the body, nor are they taught how it can be mitigated. “The world of psychology and medicine are siloed,” Narula laments. “We can’t help our patients heal if we are not bridging them.”
Like a willow that bends with the wind without breaking, the ability to embrace change is something that every one of us can develop. It is not a fixed trait. And as Narula lovingly points out, “You are already far more resilient than you think you are.”
