Tag: courage

Believing In Myself

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“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

After five years of trying to get something published in a traditional magazine or newspaper and sending out 99 query letters, I finally received a “yes” yesterday. You know what I find harder than writing? Believing in myself. Believing that I have something worth saying. Because sending out 99 query letters has very little to do with writing and everything to do with believing in myself or at the very least believing that it is something I am called to do. If you do the math of 99 letters over five years, it becomes clear it is something that I do periodically. I have a full-time job and I also have 2 young children, one of whom was born in the middle of those five years. My attention has wandered, my internal urgency to get this done has flickered, my discipline to research editors and publications has waxed and waned. In the course of those five years, I’ve gotten a couple of maybes and other nibbles and surviving those when they didn’t work out might have been the most difficult of all.

Writing started for me about 8 years ago when I had the inspiration to record my dad’s story. My wonderful father was so good at supporting other people that it was hard to get him to talk about himself. He was 78 years old at the time and in great health so there was no urgency but I got him to sit down with me most Saturdays so that I could ask questions and record his stories. It was so fun and it brought a new intimacy to our relationship. Then about a year into my project, he went out for a neighborhood bike ride one day, hit a car and died. It felt as if the grief for this amazing man was taking up so much room in my heart that there wasn’t enough space for my lungs to breathe. So I started writing out his story as a way to process how much I loved him. I listened to those recordings and was so comforted by his voice and so grateful that I had them. I got a writing coach and the first thing I said to her was, “Listen, I am not a writer but…” She still teases me about that.

In the last few months when I have been blogging regularly, I realize it has given me the opportunity to practice believing that my stories are worthwhile. The regular act of clicking “publish” is building a muscle of submission, both to the faith that it’s safe to put my words out into the world and to the acceptance that I am called to keep writing.

That is what has ultimately led me to be able to submit 99 query letters — knowing that I am compelled to do this by something bigger than myself. Understanding that to be true means it isn’t just belief in myself but belief that the Universe can speak through my words when I bow to that ultimate power. Even saying that sounds far too grandiose for my sense of what I write and have to say. I don’t believe that me, as a person, has anything to unique to add to all the words in the world. However, I have come to see that it is all a work in progress by a force bigger than myself and what I have to do is listen and believe.

The Root of Courage

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“Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.” – Dan Rather

My mom was joking with me the other day that I’m paying for preschool for my toddler twice. “First you pay a monthly fee for him to attend three days a week,” she laughed “and then you pay again by having to hold him for three days straight after that.” And as it goes with humor, there is a lot of truth in that. As my toddler goes through this third week of being at daycare, I’m exhausted from making breakfast, lunch and dinner with only one arm but hopeful that he is getting a little more comfortable with this new routine. And as soon as we get into this rhythm, it’s going to change again when my 5-year-old gets to go to in-person Kindergarten for the first time.

This pandemic has been hard for me as I try to be everything to everyone – breadwinner, childcare, friend, teacher, janitor, all without much personal space to recharge. But this re-entry is definitely hardest on my kids. Even though there have been times when they were bored at home, all this time has mostly just been basking in their happy space without having to grow their boundaries. It has been all the sweetness of togetherness and not the growth that comes with otherness.

I come from a long line of encouragers but as we face these situations I think most often of my dad. At my dad’s funeral service, he was eulogized so perfectly as a “battery on feet, just looking for someone to jump start.” When working a project or a problem with my dad, I always felt that everything was possible. The word encourage has it’s origins from French – in courage. And to break that down further, courage as in rooted in the heart. So we encourage others by instilling courage, helping them to live from the boldness of their heart. I love this breakdown of the words because it reminds me that courage isn’t going forward without feeling but just the opposite, it is completely rooted in feeling. And to encourage, we help others lean in to all those feelings and do it anyway.

So I’m happy to hold my son for three days after his days at preschool. I give him some of my heart so that he can go forward living fully from his.

The Risks You Have to Take

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A friend said to me the other day, “I don’t know how you do it.” In this case, “it” was putting my two young kids to bed every night by myself. Of all the tricky parts that come with being a single parent, kids bedtime is definitely high on the list. The answer is that I’ve found a secret power that helps in the tough moments.

Of course, I’m not alone in discovering this – there are many stories about this secret. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana is searching for the Holy Grail so that he can heal his father who has been wounded. He’s followed the clues and reaches a chasm that seems uncrossable. He’s scared because of the urgency of his need but he trusts that there is a way across and as he steps into that void, a stone bridge reveals itself. Or Joseph Campbell’s work on the journey of the hero that lays out how the pattern unfolds. The hero spends a great deal of time trying to every way to get to his calling without being vulnerable and then finally, with nothing left to lose, plucks up his courage, steps into vulnerability and only then is able to overcome all the obstacles. Or an interview that I recently heard with Melinda French Gates on Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast, she describes how at one point in her career she didn’t like who she was becoming in the early culture of Microsoft that was very dog-eat-dog and before she quit, she decided to just try being herself and as a result, she found her success. Her comment was “no one talks about how much courage it takes.”

I believe we all reach that point where there is something we are called to do and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a risk. I, for one, spent a lot of time in that “act two” that Joseph Campbell describes trying to find a way to having a family that didn’t require the vulnerability I felt when I voiced “I’m going to choose to do this on my own.” Which is why I had my kids when I was age 46 and 50. But I can affirm that there is a force that greets us on the other side of taking the risks we are called to take. It feels like less friction because our bodies, minds and souls know they are just where they are supposed to be. It feels like faith, joy and delight all bundled together.

There is an opposite force when we are walking a path not our own. I remember this well from the years I spent married, not wanting kids, not wanting to be there and yet not brave enough to own that truth. It was like packing my soul in bubble wrap and asking it not to participate. My favorite poet and author, Mark Nepo describes what happens when we don’t take the risks we are called to, “Despite the seeming rewards of compliance, our souls grow weary by engaging in activities that are inherently against their nature.”

I don’t tell this to my friend when she makes the comment because she doesn’t need the secret right now. She has a great husband and they parent beautifully together. But when she or anyone else in my life meets the next challenge that asks them to be vulnerable in order to walk their path, I will be right next to their side telling them, “Go ahead. There is help once you step onto that path. I promise! But you have to step first.”

Vulnerability and Courage

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“I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage.” – Brene Brown

My friend sent me an email the other day that made me feel like the wind was knocked out of me. It said in essence that she was hosting Thanksgiving at her house but we weren’t invited. There are so many ways to explain this away – she didn’t mean it to be hurtful, the pandemic has made gatherings risky so to protect our older generation this is wise and so on. But the fact of middle age is that we very rarely wound each other. Our lives and patterns of communication have solidified so that no one needs to either extend themselves very far nor risk being hurt. It was such a surprise for me to feel so pierced that it threw me and my productivity off kilter for the rest of the afternoon.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts about vulnerability. it started with University of Houston research professor Brene Brown but now I’m finding that thread in so much of what I’m reading and listening to. That vulnerability means that we are daring to live out in the open, to try things and to fail, that if marks whether we are doing something meaningful. And by meaningful, I mean meaningful as in measured by personal growth.

So I’ve been consuming all this content about vulnerability, I know it’s one of my weaknesses and then my friend sends that email that hurts me. My first reaction was to hide, to pull back into my shell and just nurse the wound. I’m a pretty affable person and I can shake things off as unintended. But one of the reasons the email wounded me is that it feels like my friend often makes unilateral decisions without consulting me. And the second reason is because I secretly fear that I value her friendship more than she values mine. And the third is because I’ve never told her the previous two reasons.

Instead of hiding, I waited a few hours and sent an email back saying that I was wounded. I’ll be honest here – it felt yucky. Her response was lovely and though we probably won’t still get our families together for Thanksgiving as we have for every year for the past ten, it won’t stick like a turkey bone caught in my throat blocking my ability to breathe or be grateful. I continue to feel a little tender but within that tenderness is a kernel of additional belonging that I didn’t have before. I can speak my truth and still be accepted. My right to be here isn’t conditional on me behaving affably. I feel a little more wise about how to coach my kids about friendship. I crossed that chasm between learning about something and doing something and it makes me feel brave!