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 were applied in actual research situations during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand how they sustain and strengthen partnerships and community impact.