Psychology Today has a number of articles about how to grow from adversity. I liked the one on empowerment here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/colle...al-empowerment

The authors, Cattaneo & Chapman, define personal empowerment as

"...a process in which a person who lacks power sets a personally meaningful goal oriented toward increasing power, takes action toward that goal, and observes and reflects on the impact of this action, drawing on his or her evolving self-efficacy, knowledge, and competence related to the goal."

This section talks about experiences I am familiar with:

Why complaints are the perfect tools for achieving personal empowerment

We all encounter complaints on a regular basis, yet far more often than not we fail to pursue them effectively. Instead, we typically complain about them for the sole purpose of venting our frustrations. For example, we feel so helpless and hopeless about resolving our consumer complaints that a staggering 95% of consumer dissatisfactions go unresolved because we fail to complain effectively about them. The same holds true for complaints in our personal lives. When we are frustrated or hurt by a friend or loved one, we discuss our complaint with a large number of other friends and loved ones and rarely with the original person. (Emphasis added)

We are convinced that bringing up our complaints with the people responsible, whether they are friends and loved ones, or companies and businesses, will be more trouble than it's worth, will not lead to a satisfying resolution and that it might actually make the situation worse. It is difficult to imagine another social domain in which we feel less empowered than we do when handling our interpersonal or consumer complaints.

Sad as this reality is, it makes our interpersonal and consumer complaints an ideal arena in which to work on personal empowerment. By pursuing a complaint successfully we can demonstrate our influence in our relationships and/or our social context and feel more capable, competent and empowered.

The remainder of the article discusses how to achieve personal empowerment. I expect I shall be reading this again and again. In fact, I am getting a callback from a computer tech today. Perfect.