This reflective essay explores how the strengths and even presumed limitations of community based participatory and action research are critical assets to building and sustaining resilient research partnerships before, during, and after particularly difficult times. After highlighting key concepts from the boundary spanning and resiliency literatures, we outline how four deep-seated principles of community based participatory research (CBPR) contribute to building partnership and community resiliency. We draw upon our decades of experience across a wide range of both rural and urban partnerships to share examples of how these concepts are applied in actual research situations such as during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how they sustain and strengthen partnerships and community impact.