Rejection, Resilience, and the Risk of Saying Yes

By Lisa Kelly, MSN, RN

Writer’s Camp Guest Counselor

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Lisa Kelly, MSN, RN, is a nurse researcher whose work focuses on humanistic and holistic care, with an emphasis on purpose reconstruction, the lived experience of individuals with multiple sclerosis, and the nurse’s role in supporting both. She is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Tulsa and a PhD learner at Texas Woman’s University.

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Lessons from a PhD learner navigating her first publication.

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It wasn’t just a no. It was a “this isn’t even nursing science” kind of no. The type of rejection that lingers. Not only was the article called poorly written, but it was dismissed entirely. For a beginner, that kind of feedback can feel like an abrupt end, as if the door to scholarly contribution has slammed shut. But here’s the truth I am learning: if no one ever tells you no, it means you’ve never tried to say yes to yourself in the first place.

Rejection, especially in nursing scholarship, can be deeply personal. We write from the bedside, from memory, from lives spent witnessing suffering, hope, and resilience. And yet, when our ideas face dismissal, we may question our worth, voice, belonging, and place in the profession’s scholarly dialogue.

The Rejection Nobody Talks About

When we think of Florence Nightingale we may picture the founder of nursing, but since beginning my journey into publication I see her as one of the first writers (Dressed up as Florence for nurses week in 2025, I wondered if rejection ever dimmed her light, see image that opens this article). She carried her lamp through the halls of war, yes, but also through the pages of Notes on Nursing¹. Her writing reminds us that nurses have always documented, always reflected, always dared to teach and learn through words.

For beginner scholars, rejection often feels like a diagnosis. It arrives with a finality, as if someone has found something definitively defective in your work and, by extension, in you. But what if rejection is more like a rite of passage?

Academic rejection is not professional failure, but it can be experienced as a form of loss. When we submit an article or a grant application, we don’t just send words; we send imagined futures. These rejections leave us grieving something that once felt alive: a paper, a study, an idea with purpose. It’s not melodrama. It’s meaning-making.²

The silence around rejection, especially in nursing, reinforces the sense that others must be doing it better, cleaner, and more “correctly.” Even from established academics, top journals reject 60% to 90% of submissions. What sets productive scholars apart is not perfection. It is persistence.³

The Voice Inside

What hurts more than someone else saying no? Telling yourself no before anyone else has the chance. Self-rejection is insidious. It is the draft that never gets submitted. The idea you don’t pursue because someone else probably already said or will say it better. It is the belief that your voice, grounded in experience rather than eloquence, doesn’t deserve the page.

However, the first step to publishing is not submitting to a journal. It’s submitting to your own belief that you have something worth saying. In my case, the same article that was called “not nursing science” became the conceptual backbone of a research proposal. That proposal went on to receive grant funding. The “no” didn’t vanish, but it made space for a “yes” I wouldn’t have received otherwise.

Letting someone else tell you no means you dared to say yes to yourself first. Sometimes, we stop before we even start. Nursing often teaches us to follow protocols, color within the lines, and defer to authority. It’s no wonder we become hesitant writers. Our profession cultivates competence, not risk. We don’t want to get it wrong, on the floor, in the clinic, in the boardroom or the page.

But writing asks something different. It doesn’t require perfection. It requires presence. The same way we learn to hear what patients aren’t saying, writing teaches us to listen to the voice we’ve been quieting inside ourselves.

Rejection as Rhythm

Rejection, too, has muscle memory. The first time, it stuns. The second time, it bruises. But the third time, if we’re lucky, we begin to build a callus, not a hardening, but a resilience.⁴ You need to get rejected. Not just once, but a few times, maybe even more than you can count. Rejection is how you know you’re in the game. If you never hear no, you may not be reaching far enough beyond your comfort zone.

Just like in nursing school, where a failed intravenous catheter attempt doesn’t mean you’ll never be a good nurse, a desk rejection doesn’t reflect your potential as a scholar. It’s feedback. Sometimes sharp. Sometimes, seemingly unfair. Sometimes, exactly what we needed to get clearer.

Even the most cited papers can be those that were first rejected multiple times. Some were denied four times, only to go on to earn hundreds of citations. Rejection isn’t a verdict. A no is often just a not-here or not-now, a delayed yes waiting for the right place or time. It’s part of the choreography. A scholarly dance of write, submit, receive, reframe³.

But this rhythm requires vulnerability. And vulnerability is hard to hold in a profession where we are taught to be right. Nursing, however, lives in the liminal space between perfection and practice. We care in the gray. Why should we write in black and white?

The Hidden Curriculum of Self-Rejection

In the hidden curriculum of nursing, we’re often taught to prioritize humility, precision, and quiet competence. These values serve patients well, but they can also make us wary of visibility. Writing, however, demands that we risk being seen.

When we say no to ourselves preemptively, we internalize the gatekeeping we hope to dismantle. And that kind of silencing doesn’t just affect us, it affects the profession because the voices missing from the literature are often those living closest to the cusp of insight, discomfort, and innovation, those doing the emotional and intellectual labor that moves nursing forward.

Holding Both

How do we move forward without minimizing the grief of rejection?

Grief is a helpful lens here, particularly in nursing. It’s not just a denied publication or lost grant. It’s a fracture in how we see ourselves as nurse scholars, particularly for those early in their journey.²

But grief, like writing, is not something to be rushed. The dominant narrative in academia says, “Repurpose it,” “Repackage it,” “Recycle your ideas.” These are helpful strategies, but they can flatten the emotional labor it takes to even open the feedback email.

Not all rejections are created equal. Some offer clarity. Others serve as thinly veiled gatekeeping. It’s okay to say that out loud. Like any field, nursing scholarship is shaped by power, who gets to decide what counts, what is rigorous, and what is “science.”

When a journal said my article wasn’t nursing science, I had to sit with the sting. But I also had to question that definition. Because if nursing is about meaning, suffering, and human experience, then surely work rooted in those very places belongs. Sometimes, the “no” is a sign you’re pushing the boundaries that need pushing.

Saying Yes to Ourselves

This article isn’t about glorifying rejection. It’s about honoring it. Rejection can feel isolating, but it doesn’t have to be. Share the wins with the losses. Own the rejection. Shout it proudly from the rooftop. Because the more we normalize rejection, the less power it has to shame us into silence. Talk about your rejections with your peers and faculty, not just to vent, but to strategize⁵. Workshop the feedback. Ask for ideas. Let others help you find your way to a yes.

There is a kind of courage in showing up to write again after rejection, trusting that the idea still matters even if someone else didn’t see it, and believing that being told “no” is not a reflection of value but of timing, fit, or perspective.

I often think about how nursing itself trains us for this. We care for people when we don’t have answers. We bear witness to the unknown. We sit beside loss and choose to keep showing up. Writing is no different. It’s showing up for an idea even when the outcome is uncertain.

And maybe that’s the real dance: writing not for certainty, but for possibility.

Write Anyway

Reflecting back on Florence, I can’t help but wonder: what would she have done if someone had rejected Notes on Nursing? Maybe early on, they did. Still, she wrote. And in doing so, she gave us permission to write, too.

If writing is an act of courage, then rejection is the tuition we pay for growth. But don’t let that tuition bankrupt you emotionally. Surround yourself with others who get it. Reread your own words out loud and listen for what still moves you. Pick a sentence, revise it, and start from there.

Most of all, keep saying yes to your voice, your vision, your practice. Not because someone else said you could. But because you know, deeply, that your perspective is worth the page. To write after rejection is to refuse stillness. It is an act of creative and scholarly motion that keeps nursing growing, questioning, and evolving. It is how we move forward. So move. Write anyway.

References

1. Nightingale F. Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not. New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company; 1860
2. Borgstrom, E., Driessen, A., Krawczyk, M., Kirby, E., MacArtney, J., & Almack, K. (2024). Grieving academic grant rejections: Examining funding failure and experiences of loss. The Sociological Review, 72(5), 998–1017. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261231207196
3. Furnham, A. (2021). Publish or perish: Rejection, scientometrics and academic success. Scientometrics, 126, 843–847. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03694-0
4. Aryuwat, P., Asp, M., Lövenmark, A., Radabutr, M., & Holmgren, J. (2023). An integrative review of resilience among nursing students in the context of nursing education. Nursing open, 10(5), 2793–2818. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.1559
5. Allen, K. A., Freese, R. L., & Pitt, M. B. (2022). Rejection Resilience-Quantifying Faculty Experience With Submitting Papers Multiple Times After a Rejection. Academic pediatrics, 22(5), 876–878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2021.12.031

Author: Lisa Kelly

Editors: Jayne Jennings Dunlap and Leslie H. Nicoll

© 2025 Writer’s Camp and Lisa Kelly. CC-BY-ND 4.0

Citation: Kelly L. Rejection, resilience and the risk of saying yes. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2025; 1(1):15. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15603064