Braveheart

I wish I were brave enough to ________. 

How would you complete that sentence? 

Where do you wish you had more courage?

A colleague is heading out in a few weeks for a 10-day silent retreat. 10 days of complete, utter silence. 

I’m not ready to be with myself in quiet for 10 days. I wish I were brave enough to do that. 

I met a coach once who said she takes a day off every week, a week off every month, and a month off every year. I wish I were brave enough to do that. I would go to a tiny house by the ocean somewhere and write for a month straight.

The bravest thing I ever did in my life was in my early thirties, when I left home with my 5-year-old son—leaving behind my ex-husband, who was an active alcoholic at the time. We were never in physical danger—he did not drink around us. But I was certainly under emotional and psychological stress, and I knew it wasn't healthy for my son.

That—along with stepping into my first Al-Anon meeting—were some of the most courageous things I have ever done.

But courage is a life-long pursuit. Moment after moment will come our way, day after day, year after year, asking us to take one leap after the other. Just when we cross a new edge, like a false peak, a new mountain appears.

Today, well on the other side of those moments, I find lots of new times asking me to be courageous.

What do you wish you were courageous enough to do?

When I left home with my son, I was fortunate enough to have my parents living nearby, so we moved in with them. We had a safe place to go. It doesn’t seem like it should have been that scary. But at the time, it felt terrifying. I remember thinking about leaving for a year before I did. I was not just walking away from my marriage, but I was ending the dream of marriage. I was leaving the dream of what it means to be an intact family.

But when you are afraid, there’s often something bigger than that fear that is drawing you forward. 

Keeping my son safe and maintaining healthy boundaries at that time was Thing #1 for me. That’s when it was clear I needed to cross that edge. When the pain of staying was greater than the pain of leaving.

What is calling you forward?

FDR once said, “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” 

You basically have to want something more than you want to stay where you are.

What is that thing you are afraid of? What is that change you are thinking about making or taking but you just haven’t yet?

And then, what is bigger than your fear about that? 

It could be your love for your child, as in my case. It could be a passion or soul purpose you have. It could be something you care about, or a value you are connected to that is stronger than that tie between you and that fear.

Six months after we left, my ex went into rehab and got sober and has stayed sober ever since. In the end, ours has a happy ending. We are great friends, we both have had lasting, new relationships, and we are better co-parents to our son, even though we had to do the job apart. 

Today, I look back and see that relationship as a success because it did what it needed to do. It grew us both up, sent my ex and me into recovery, and produced an amazing kid out of it.

And FDR wasn’t the only one who was thinking about courage almost a hundred years ago. His better half Eleanor once said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'”

Get ready for that next thing. Take that next leap.